


Identity: The Sorcerer Saga

by Muphrid



Category: Ranma 1/2
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 82,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muphrid/pseuds/Muphrid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For 20 years, the Sorcerers of Qinghai kept to themselves, using ki magic to stay hidden from the outside world, but the battle between Saffron and Ranma Saotome at Jusendo threw that magic out of balance. Now, as Ranma returns to China to claim his cure, the Sorcerers emerge from seclusion, seeking to neutralize the threat to their paradise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Cold Rain

In the years since the Jusenkyō Guide had first taken up his post, many a lost traveler had come knocking on his shack’s rickety door, and every one of them brought a unique flavor of trouble. From time to time, ignorant tourists sought out the spring ground, expecting that they could train atop bamboo poles over the dozens of cursed pools below. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this idea—that was their thinking, at least. Ranma was one such person, but the Guide excused him for it, since he’d been led into trying by his reckless father. The Amazons liked to train there, too, but only with disgraced warriors who, in the Tribe’s judgment, deserved the punishment if they fell into a spring. Ambitious martial artists weren’t the only ones to come by the small shack on the edge of the spring ground. The last visitors to drop in had been vicious bird-men, and they hadn’t bothered to knock. It was all the Guide could do to get his daughter Plum to town and out of their reach, and the ensuing conflict had almost dried up the springs completely.

After that debacle, the Guide dug out the old books his predecessor had left behind on the tribal peoples of Qinghai—just in case more natives stopped by—and wondered to himself if he should’ve stayed in Beijing to drive horse-drawn carriages. The money wasn’t nearly as good in the city, though, and with the remoteness of Jusenkyō, there was a certain appeal to being immersed in nature. Indeed, the Guide had never had problems with the animals. Only when people arrived did bad things tend to happen.

Then again, when the Guide had received a call from Tōkyō earlier that week, he knew mayhem and chaos were well on their way. He just didn’t expect them to come pounding on his door— _rap_ , _rap_ , _rap_ —quite so soon.

“Who’s that, Daddy?” His daughter Plum looked up from a doodling pad, puzzled. “Is that Honored Guest from Japan here so soon?”

“I doubt it,” said the Guide. “If it were, he’d be days earlier than he said he would be. Hide yourself for a moment. Let’s not have a repeat of what happened last time.”

Sighing, Plum crouched behind an icebox, taking her drawing pad with her. “You’re worrying too much, Daddy.”

Rap-rap-rap! The door rattled on its hinges again, and the Guide went to the knob. He collected himself for a moment, making sure Plum couldn’t be seen, and called through the door. “Yes, hello? Who’s there?”

“We understand you are a guide to this place, that you direct visitors around this spring ground.”

It was a girl’s voice, cold and serious. The Guide didn’t recognize it. “That’s right,” he replied. “Who are you?”

“Visitors.”

The Guide inched the door open cautiously, and with the first slivers of light from outside, he studied the strangers. There were four of them, all relatively young—around age twenty or so he guessed. Their clothes were solid black—short-sleeved shirts and long pants for each one. Three men and a girl stood before the Guide’s door. The Guide guessed the girl was the leader, and despite her stern expression, he thought her fairly pretty, with her straight reddish-brown hair extending halfway down her back.

And lastly, each of the four carried a stick—thin, slender, and nearly as tall as its wielder. These weapons were capped with blunt, cast iron tips.

“So,” said the Guide, eying one of these dangerous staves, “you would like to visit the spring ground?”

“We have questions for you,” said the leader, the girl with the reddish-brown hair. “What happened here twenty-two days ago?”

“Twenty-two days?” The Guide laughed. “Are you sure you don’t want to ask about twenty-one days ago—or twenty-three? Saying exactly twenty-two is quite particular, don’t you think?”

The leader blinked, but her stony expression didn’t waver.

“Ah, you must be talking about the interruption to the springs’ water supply,” the Guide concluded. “If it’s that you’re asking about, I can assure you, nothing of the sort will happen again on my watch. The culprit has already been dealt with.”

“Who?” asked the leader.

“I’m sorry?”

“Who is the culprit?”

The Guide hesitated. A sweat broke out on his brow. To find strangers on his doorstep asking extremely specific questions was unsettling, even more so considering just what and who they were so curious about. If only he’d had the presence of mind to read that book on the natives of Qinghai Province a little sooner, he might’ve known what they were really after!

As it was, the Guide decided to be cautious. “I’m afraid I don’t quite know,” he said. “Some wandering martial artist took care of the problem; I really had absolutely nothing to do with it, I promise you.”

The leader narrowed her eyes. “Where do we find him?”

“I really couldn’t say. He left in a big, big hurry. So sorry!”

And with that, the Guide slammed the door on his visitors, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Daddy, I hope you’re more convincing than that when you tell the army men no one came by the springs,” said Plum, who scribbled away at her notepad nonchalantly.

“What do you mean? I don’t think they suspect a thing!”

“Then why are you trying to block the door?”

The Guide jammed a chair under the doorknob, hoping to stall the door before it could move inward more than an inch. Truly, there was no hiding anything from a perceptive child, so the Guide didn’t bother arguing with her. Instead, he cleared his dinner table of scattered bowls and plates, and from the back wall of the shack, he retrieved a set of scrolls, books, and parchments. He flipped through pages and notes frantically. Men with fighting staves—that was pretty unique. There had to be something in all those papers about them. Though he heard nothing from the visitors outside, the Guide searched for even a fragment of information about their kind, just in case they returned. Sure enough, in a dusty hardback from the 1960s, he found a crude drawing of warriors like the ones at his door. Their metal-tipped staves were distinctive, but what caught the Guide’s eye most were the jagged, colorful bolts of lightning that emanated from the warriors’ hands.

“You found something about those people?” asked Plum, coming out from her hiding place. “What does it say?”

“Hm?” He stepped back from the book, his brow furrowing with confusion. “It says they use magic.”

Ka-PAM! The door splintered in two; the chair holding it there bent and shattered. A wave of air pressure pushed into the shack, and it shoved the Guide forward with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer. His body catapulted through the table. The texts ripped, spreading papers over the floor, and the Guide lay sprawled atop the shredded texts with stars in his eyes. He worked his jaw repeatedly, trying in vain to get his ears to pop.

The visitors entered through the broken door, the leader in front with her staff in one hand. She watched as two of her comrades took the Guide by his arms. They turned him on his back and pulled down his shirt by the neck.

Shink. The last visitor plunged a hollow bamboo needle into the exposed skin by the Guide’s shoulder blade. The Guide went woozy and glassy-eyed. He slipped from the visitors’ grasp, keeling over face-down on the floor, and the visitors took him by the arms once more to carry him away.

“Hey!” cried Plum. “Where are you taking my father?”

The leader of the visitors thrust an open hand toward the girl, and from the stranger’s fingers, ripples of golden energy emanated. Plum shied away from the stranger, half-hiding behind the icebox once more, and the visitors ignored her. They left without a word, and indeed, the shack was eerily quiet.

Until a black rotary phone on the Guide’s desk rang.

The Guide’s feet dragged on the ground as they carried him out, and Plum didn’t dare give chase.

The phone continued to ring.

Two of the strangers took the Guide on their backs between them, and with him firmly in their grasp, the Guide’s feet left the ground. His captors levitated and flew, and Plum stepped through the broken doorway, staring in awe.

The phone stopped ringing, and a bulky piece of machinery spun into motion, playing a magnetic tape. “Hello, Honored Guest! You’ve reached the phone line of the Guide to the mystical training ground Jusenkyō! Please leave your message after the beep, and if I haven’t drowned and turned into a cat or some other voiceless animal, I’ll be sure to get back to you. Pleasant journey!”

BEEP.

The visitors soared skyward, taking Plum’s father with them and becoming small dots in front of a blue backdrop. Only their leader remained, listening intently as the call came in.

“Hey, Guide, it’s me,” said the voice on the answering machine. “I was just calling to see if the weather’s good at Jusenkyō. I should be there in a couple days, so if it starts to rain, maybe you could prepare another cask? Yeah, I know I didn’t explain what happened to the first one or why I’m back so soon. It’s a long story.”

Plum blinked, turning around. Her eyes focused on the black rotary phone in the shack, which sat neatly on the Guide’s desk, but the leader of the strangers saw it, too. The girl gripped her weapon tightly, and even from outside the shack, one swing of her battle staff launched a shockwave, piercing the walls and shattering the telephone and the desk it sat on. Satisfied, the leader followed her men, flying past the trees.

And with her only link to the outside world irrevocably cut, Plum could only watch the strangers go. On the horizon, wispy clouds began to roll in—the first portents of a coming storm.

  


It was a storm Saotome Ranma heard coming through the loud, grating, repetitive tone of a busy signal.

“Hello? Guide?” He distanced himself from the phone’s earpiece, wincing as that irritating sound poured out. With two fingers, Ranma pressed down on the switchhook, resetting the line, and dialed again, only to get the same result: a busy signal with no trace of anyone on the other end.

A man peered out from a desk, looking at Ranma and the phone on the wall. A glass divider separated the man from the outside world, with only a small opening for cash to change hands. He spoke to Ranma haltingly, consulting a red booklet as he spoke.

“Is…there…a chestnut—ah, a _problem_ , young lady?”

Ranma huffed to himself. “No, no problem,” he assured the clerk at the front desk. “It was just a shorter call than I thought it would be.”

The man at the front desk nodded and smiled, putting away his booklet, and Ranma thought better of explaining further. There was only so much to say to a man who needed a pocket dictionary to speak Japanese. Trying to explain a gender-changing curse and the trouble of dousing himself with more cursed water to reverse it was right out.

Puzzled by the Guide’s lack of response, Ranma headed upstairs, across tiled floors and wooden steps to his room. It was a small, dinky motel he stayed in, with flat, blackened remains of discarded chewing gum sticking on the walkways and floors, never mind the odor of cigarette smoke that seemed to ooze from the walls of the lobby, practically choking him as he’d talked. Still, Ranma was in no position to be picky. In the wilds of Qinghai Province, there were few outposts of civilization to break up the arid wastes. One of them was Yushu, the last bastion of the modern world for at least two hundred miles in every direction, and as luck would have it, it was just two days’ hike from Jusenkyō—the cursed training ground. That was Ranma’s destination, and he wouldn’t let an ear-splitting busy signal deter him.

Ranma climbed the steps to the third floor in a brisk, chilling wind. Exposed to the elements, he walked under stained, flickering lights to his room. A glow in the sky told of the coming dawn, and in the distance, the great mountains of the Himalayas loomed over the horizon, catching sunlight that had yet to fall on the town. Once sunlight hit, it would be time to go. This was Ranma’s third visit to China, and he’d endeavored to make sure it was an expedient one. Unlike his last two visits, Ranma had enjoyed a reasonably quick plane ride from Japan to the central city of Lanzhou—a polluted, industrial city. From there, he took a train to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, and arrived there within six hours. The harder part was the long bus ride from Xining to Yushu, spanning nearly two days. The time spent didn’t bother him, but the traveling conditions did, for Ranma had very little money of his own. To fund this journey, he’d needed more than a little help, and fortunately, there had been one man entirely willing to provide for his _precious_ and _darling_ pigtailed girl.

On returning to his room, Ranma made a beeline for his pack, uncovering a canteen. A good splash of water would wake his traveling companion, if only he could find him.

“Kunō?” Ranma glanced around the room, from the lumpy carpet to the hazy windows. “Where’d you go, Moneybags?” Ranma frowned, thinking back. Kunō had proved a more irritating and enthusiastic traveling companion than even Ranma had feared. Naturally, Kunō wasn’t in the bed—that was Ranma’s territory, and Kunō would’ve had a bed of his own if he hadn’t insisted on only one for the both of them. No, Kunō had to be dealt with and restrained in other ways, and that’s when Ranma remembered what exactly he’d done with the misguided boy.

Ranma went to the dresser under the television and opened the bottom drawer.

“There you are, Kunō. Morning.”

The self-styled samurai Kunō Tatewaki lay stuffed in the drawer, his body contorted and bent. He stared up dully—his eyes open yet his mind still asleep.

Ranma felt a pang of pity at this sight. When he’d come to the Kunō estate earlier that week, dressed in a pink skirt with _frills_ of all things, he’d known there was some danger in going to Kunō. The boy had a raging attraction to his darling “pigtailed girl,” and the only thing firmer than that lust was the wood of his practice sword. Ranma had hoped to use that against Kunō, persuading him to take a journey to the cursed training ground of Jusenkyō with the promise that it would help him defeat Ranma and claim both Akane and the mythical pigtailed girl. Unsurprisingly, once Ranma crafted a suitably epic tale about the legendary powers one might gain from training at Jusenkyō, Kunō came to this conclusion in roughly three seconds flat.

All in all, it was the quickest path back to China. Swimming across the Yellow Sea would’ve taken a few days and left him beat for the rest of the journey on foot, and Ranma wanted to avoid any unnecessary delays. His urgency should prove to anyone he was serious. He’d never been serious enough about trying to reclaim his cure, had he? If he had been, he wouldn’t have taken off for home while the springs were flooded the last time he’d been in China.

On the other hand, no one had questioned his manhood then.

Ranma shook himself, putting that line of thinking out of his mind. He turned the cup of water over, and the liquid splashed over Kunō’s face. “Good morning, Sempai!” he cried, his voice squeaky and chipper. “It was so gentlemanly of you to hide in the drawer to protect my virtue!”

Groggily, Kunō blinked. “I…hid myself?”

No doubt he was struggling with a very different memory, one of pretending to sleepwalk from his futon on the floor to fondle Ranma’s breasts. Never mind that sleepwalking people seldom announce that they’re sleepwalking while trying to feel a girl’s chest. At that, Ranma had tried desperately to restrain Kunō with minimal fuss. His first attempt involved sealing Kunō in a sleeping bag by breaking off the zipper, but somehow, the man slithered back to the bed. After a couple more rounds of this nonsense, Ranma lured Kunō to the head of the bed and knocked him out cold. Perhaps the drawer was a bit much; Ranma had hoped to avoid tripping over him in case he’d needed to take a trip to the toilet overnight. Stumbling over Kunō’s body might’ve started all that ruckus over again, but still…

“My darling, you are as luscious and beautiful as ever! It is a joy to see you at this early hour, though I regret that it makes my body react in ways I cannot control. I do apologize for that, but it means I can’t quite…” He jerked in the drawer and gestured to his waist. “Perhaps you could assist me?”

With that, Ranma’s pity for Kunō dimmed like a lamp on its last drop of oil. _Somebody shoot me for taking him along. Really._

Ranma left Kunō there to struggle a bit. It was only a temporary measure to keep the boy restrained while Ranma washed up and prepared their things for the hike ahead. Ranma took the half-empty canteen and went for the sink to fill it up. The sink sputtered like a wheezing giant, and a residue of dark minerals swirled around the drain.

“All right, guess we’re not doing that,” said Ranma, turning the faucet shut. Searching through his bag of toiletries, Ranma fished out his toothbrush and wetted the bristles with clean canteen water. He squeezed out a dab of light blue paste from a travel-size tube and looked up, into the mirror, staring at the image of a girl.

“Well?” he asked his reflection. “What do you have to say for yourself? Any last words?”

The girl in the mirror looked back with a hard, inscrutable expression.

“You know, it’s not going to be long before I’m rid of you for good,” Ranma went on. “You’re not going to come out in a rainstorm or when I go to the beach. You’ll be gone forever.”

The girl in the mirror frowned, her brow furrowing in thought.

“You’re part of the reason I’m not married right now,” said Ranma, pointing the toothbrush at the mirror. “We would’ve had Shampoo and Ucchan under control, but I needed water to get rid of you. That’s not to say I wanted to be married, but still—if Akane had married me without the water, she’d be marrying you, too, and a girl can’t marry a girl.”

Ranma’s reflection raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” Ranma corrected himself, “not anywhere around here, anyway. Maybe in Holland.”

The girl in the mirror said nothing, and Ranma thought better of trying to talk to her. He stuck the toothbrush in his mouth and cleaned his teeth for the next minute straight. In fairness, the girl in the mirror had served him on occasion. He’d used her to taunt Ryōga from time to time, pretending to be his fiancée or his sister. He’d gone out as a girl to play tennis in the winter, tricking his perverted master Happōsai to capture him. These deceptions were her forte. They came easy to her—the girl in the mirror, who was borne of him not a part of him. She was a silent reflection, and nothing he did while in that body could really be said to come from him, could it?

Indeed, the only good thing his curse had ever done was present a non-threatening face to a girl, putting her at ease long enough to say, “I’m Akane; want to be friends?” Even that hadn’t quite turned out the way they’d expected, for either of them—mostly because Ranma was never really a girl at all. That shy, casual friend his fiancée had been looking for? She didn’t exist.

Perhaps that was why things had always been rocky between them. That girl had been looking for something within him that he just couldn’t give. He was a man through and through. Once he went back home cured, even she would have to see that.

  


Once Kunō managed to break himself free of the drawer, he and Ranma set out. On the whole, despite the annoyances Kunō could bring, it was better to travel with a partner. One lone man, as strong as he might think himself, could slip on a rock and fall—or worse, he could wander into a den of hungry panthers and become paralyzed with fright.

And since Ranma had to go as a girl on this journey to keep Kunō pacified, he could reasonably persuade Kunō to carry both their packs. Taking that weight off Ranma’s shoulders was no small benefit, either. At the very least, it let Ranma focus on navigation instead of the weight on his back or his footing. Being efficient with their path would prove key, for as daylight came, cloud cover grew over the Tibetan Plateau. Qinghai Province had seen an unusual amount of rain of late. March was supposed to be part of a dry, cold winter, but Ranma just been to Jusenkyō to see it flood from rain. On the way in, Ranma and Kunō had found the paths into town spongy and soft, so whatever the weather pattern, Ranma knew they needed to make good time. Kunō’s wild blathering, however, seemed to sap Ranma’s energy with every step.

“Three weeks,” Kunō decided to himself, nodding confidently. “Three weeks of nonstop training, and I will humiliate Saotome and demonstrate my true worth to Tendō Akane! Oh, and to you, of course.”

Ranma rolled his eyes. “Three weeks, huh? Is that all?”

“You think it will require more training to defeat him handily?”

“I think you could train there for ten years and not even scratch me—I mean, him—as long as there aren’t any watermelons around.”

“I fail to see what melons have to do with it.”

“That’s because all memory of that place has already left your brain.”

Kunō stared at Ranma, mystified, like a child marveling at how two and two could add to make four. “Regardless,” he went on, gazing across the Plateau, “once I have completed my training regimen, Saotome and I will duel one another atop Mount Fuji, in the snow, while blindfolded and hopping on one leg. To your raucous applause, I will overpower him! Children will speak of this feat in awe for years to come.”

Ranma’s gut spasmed, and he suppressed a dry heave. _Free food on the plane back to Japan versus getting away from this idiot. A smooth, quick trip back versus a rickety old ferry or swimming across an ocean yourself. Man, Kunō—how can you be so annoying that this is even something I have to seriously think about?_

“Is something wrong, pigtailed girl?”

Ranma flinched. With miles upon miles of cold, arid desert around them, there was frighteningly little to distract them from each other, and Kunō seemed to enjoy staring at Ranma’s face, studying his every expression, a bit _too_ much.

“No, of course not, Sempai!” Ranma answered in the highest pitch he could maintain. “Whyever would you think that? Hehe, you’re so silly! That’s why I really lo—oh, I mean, why I like you so much!” His stomach twisted into a sailor’s knot. _Acting sweet like that is really going to kill me. I swear._

“I’m flattered you find my company so rewarding,” said Kunō, nodding proudly, “but I’ve been troubled since we set out. In truth, it’s something that has gnawed at me every since you came to my home with word of this accursed training ground. It stirred a question within me that I cannot shake or resolve, no matter how much I apply my impressive intellect.”

_By ‘impressive,’ do you mean, ‘on par with that of an ant’?_

“Pigtailed girl, is it possible that you and Saotome…?”

_That we what, are the same person? No way. There is no way in hell that you’re making this connection now. If you do, forget going to Jusenkyō. I’ll stay as a girl forever and kiss your feet._

“That you and Saotome…”

_Come on, spit it out!_

“…have colluded to bring me here?”

Ranma scoffed. _Knew it._

“Please, take me seriously; I don’t understand.”

“I’ll bet you don’t,” said Ranma. “Er, I mean, what don’t you understand?”

“Giving me this opportunity to learn and defeat that wretch is something I relish with every passing moment, but there is no reason for you to be here, pigtailed girl. As much as I enjoy your company, I did not think I could free you from Saotome’s spell until I bested him in fair combat. So, why are you here?”

Ranma looked away, his gaze lengthening to the distant horizon. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me, pigtailed girl. If you’ve undertaken this task out of the generosity of your heart, I wish to thank you. If there is some other reason you’ve come here, I wish to assist.”

 _You could assist me by cutting out all this talk,_ thought Ranma, but alas, his private griping would do little to dissuade Kunō, so in frustration, he tried a different tack instead. “Tell me, Kunō—you ever had your pride, your manhood, challenged by someone important to you?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“If I said you were weak and not strong enough for me, what would you do?”

Kunō laughed. “What a curious question. You need not pretend you dislike me, pigtailed girl. We’re growing too old for such games.”

_You and me aren’t doing anything of the kind._

“But, if I must answer your question,” Kunō went on, “I would ask what I must do to prove to you my strength and prowess, if defeating Saotome won’t suffice, and I wouldn’t rest until it was done.”

“Then at least there’s one thing we understand each other on,” muttered Ranma.

“But I don’t understand—what does that have to do with you?”

Ranma shrugged. “Sometimes, there are just things you have to do, and you need to do it on your own, so you can prove to yourself and anyone else who might’ve doubted you. You get me?”

“Of course. If you should require aid, I will provide it, but I too know the meaning of personal duty. I will not interfere if you don’t wish it.”

 _At last, the guy is reasonable,_ thought Ranma, relieved. _Maybe we can survive this trip after all._

With that matter settled, the two trudged on in silence, and Ranma was grateful for that. The long hike to Jusenkyō would take much of his energy—energy he didn’t need to waste on chatting with Kunō. The high altitude slowed both of them down, and Ranma purposefully paced himself to keep from overexertion. The thin air and desolate landscape made the Tibetan Plateau a harsh, unpleasant place, and as much as Ranma desired his cure, every minute spent in that desert knotted his stomach with foreboding and dread. The wilderness was nothing like the city. It forced a man to do what he needed to survive.

In that respect, Ranma and Kunō were no exceptions. Though Jusenkyō lay several hours ahead, Ranma and Kunō set up a camp partway through the afternoon, preparing for a cold night. While Kunō rounded up sparse twigs and branches from the runty vegetation in the area, Ranma went about finding food. A hot meal could do wonders for a man’s state of mind in the wild, and Ranma had never been fond of nutrition bars. The human body worked better when it had something of substance to digest. The Plateau was scarce in berries and edible grasses, but it supported some wildlife. With pieces of string, rocks, and twigs, Ranma set snares and traps for whatever might wander into them. He checked the traps frequently, more out of boredom than any real hope of catching anything so quickly, but Ranma was in luck.

Caw!

A small, spotted bird flapped its wings in vain, pulling the string taut, but the weight of the rock on the other end kept it grounded. It was a partridge, and a feisty one at that, for as Ranma reeled it in, the bird pecked and snapped at him. Ranma didn’t need it to be well-behaved, though. The spotted partridge, with lines of black around its eyes and a touch of red down near its head, would make for a fine snack when roasted over a fire. If anything, the more the bird struggled, the harder it would be for Ranma to put it down quickly and mercifully, and that was important. Just because Ranma was hungry didn’t mean the bird had to suffer. It had done nothing to deserve such a fate, after all.

Not like another bird he’d run across.

Nevertheless, Ranma grabbed the partridge, holding its legs and body with one hand. The bird seemed to realize the futility of its actions, giving up as Ranma held it restrained. He took the head in hand, but he hesitated. It was one thing to take an animal’s life when it was injured and wouldn’t survive anyway. That was an act of kindness. To kill for other reasons—for food, or in one’s own defense—wasn’t brutal or cruel, at least not in itself. As long as the man doing the killing took no pleasure, joy, or satisfaction in it, what was the harm?

Ranma frowned. What was the harm in eating granola bars for a night when he’d be at the Guide’s house by the next day?

He set the bird down on the ground and snapped the string with his bare hands, and when the partridge looked at him curiously, he stomped on the ground to scare it off. “Shoo! Go on, get out of here!”

The bird took off—perhaps surprised that it could fly again—and never looked back, nor did Ranma.

  


Night on the Tibetan Plateau was frigid, but a well-stocked fire and sleeping bags helped mitigate the cold. What didn’t help was Kunō sidling up to Ranma in the middle of the night, claiming they could share body heat.

When daylight broke the next morning, it came through a heavy blanket of clouds, and Ranma scrambled to pack up their camp and hit the road with Kunō lagging behind, but for all Ranma’s haste, the weather was faster. As the Plateau turned from desolate, rocky wastes to thickening forest—a byproduct of the springs’ ample water supply, no doubt—Ranma donned raingear for the rest of the hike. Rainwater beaded on his clear poncho and fell away, leaving him unbothered, but behind Ranma, Kunō struggled.

“Forgive me,” said Kunō, breathing heavily as he fumbled over the poncho’s folds. “I am usually brilliant, but this contraption seems oddly puzzling. I must not be thinking clearly right now.”

 _Try ‘most of the time,’_ Ranma thought to himself, but even for Kunō, this was unusual. Perhaps the hike and the thin air had taken too much of a toll on the boy. It would be better for him to rest. Besides, Ranma didn’t want to have to deal with Kunō wandering about Jusenkyō in search of his missing pigtailed girl.

So Ranma fished though his pack, finding a pair of cookies. “Here, Sempai!” he cried in the most chipper, feminine voice he could muster. “Eat these; they’ll restore your strength!”

“Why thank you, pigtailed girl. I shall savor every bite.” Munch. “They are delicious, but nowhere near as delectable as your pure…your pure…” Kunō wobbled, going unsteady on his feet, and Ranma caught him by the arm, easing him down to sit dazed by a tree trunk.

“I might’ve forgotten to mention your sister made them for us,” Ranma explained. “You don’t think she laced them with something, do you?”

Sure enough, Kunō slumped over, falling asleep, and that was for the best anyway. Gods only knew that if Kunō got any closer to the springs, he might fall into some nasty pool, like the Spring of Drowned Wannabe Samurai with Delusions of Awesome.

_Kunō’s already all of those things, though, and he’s not that dangerous. Just annoying._

For good measure, Ranma tied Kunō to that tree. Only then did he feel safe entering the spring ground. To protect himself from the rain, he pulled tightly on the hood of his clear poncho, but the thin material could do only so much to keep the water out of his face. If it was already raining that hard, the springs couldn’t hold out much longer. Hopefully the Guide had heard his message asking him to prepare a cask. That way, he wouldn’t be at the mercy of the weather, of waiting for the springs to finish flooding and go down again.

When Ranma set eyes on the Guide’s shack, however, his hopes were dashed. A whole corner of the shack had been lopped off, as if it were a block of tofu for an angry chef to cut and shape at his prerogative.

Slowing his steps, Ranma approached. He peered into the remaining, open shell of the shack and called out. “Hello? Anybody home still?”

Weakly, a voice answered him. It came from behind a white icebox—one that had become stained from dripping water that came in freely through the roof. The voice was soft and quiet, difficult to hear above the rain. “Honored Guest?”

Ranma tip-toed over soggy scraps of paper and parchment. He crept around the icebox, and there he found Plum. The young girl shivered, having wrapped herself in some dusty bedsheets for warmth, but nothing could keep the rain totally at bay. Water pooled in spots on the floor, hemming the girl into an uncomfortably small space to stay dry.

“What the hell happened here? Where’s your old man, Plum? He didn’t just leave you here, did he?”

She shook her head slowly, stuck in a lethargic daze. “Very tragic story, Honored Guest,” she said. “They took him. People came for him, and they took him.”

So that’s why the Guide didn’t answer. Someone had come after him, someone who—judging by the damage where his desk had been—had smashed the Guide’s phone into pieces.

“Who did this, Plum?” demanded Ranma. “Those Phoenix bastards again? I thought they didn’t need anything else from Jusenkyō!”

“Not Phoenix,” she said, shaking her head. “It said they were called Sorcerers.”

“Sorcerers? There are more crazy people in this area?”

“I read about them in Daddy’s book.” Shedding her layers, Plum crawled over the floor. She fetched a thick, dusty book with yellowed pages and dragged it back to the icebox. Her stomach growled, but Plum flipped the pages of the book, oblivious to the sound.

“Hey, when’s the last time you ate?”

“Yesterday. There was a bag of berries Daddy had picked. He left them in the icebox; I wanted to eat them before all the ice ran out.”

“How big a bag?”

Plum put her hands together, forming a small cup. “About that much.”

“All day? Plum, when did these guys come for your old man?”

“Yesterday, right at dawn, when you called.”

“That was a day and a half ago! Why didn’t you go get help?”

“I knew you were coming,” she said groggily. “I just had to stay here and wait.”

Little wonder she was so zoned out. She’d used up all her strength to hold out for him, to stay alive.

Ranma undid the cap of his canteen and put it to Plum’s lips. “Here, drink first; then you can have whatever food’s in my pack. There are some dry clothes in there, too, but I doubt any of it will fit. Eat what you can, but not too fast, and don’t touch the cookies. They’re bad.”

Wiping her mouth from the canteen, Plum looked at him strangely. “Cookies can go bad?”

“When they’re poisoned, yeah. You don’t want to know, trust me.” Ranma leaned over the thick, dusty book. The open page showed men in lightweight cloth armor wielding staves. Ranma figured they must’ve been the culprits. “Now what’s this about Sorcerers?”

Plum turned the book around for Ranma to read. “I don’t understand some of the really complicated characters, but I think it says the Sorcerers were one of the major tribes of the Province until twenty years ago, when their village just disappeared.”

Ranma squinted. Chinese and Japanese shared some common ideograms, but staring at the page in front of him made his eyes cross. “Sorry, I really don’t read Chinese. Just bottom line it for me; if their village disappeared, how are we going to find them and get your old man back?”

“Oh, we don’t have to go all that way,” said Plum. “They’re still here; come and see.” She rose to her feet, wobbling for a moment as the blood rushed from her head, but she tugged at Ranma’s pant leg, leading him back to the door and the rain. “Look past the trees. Smoke’s coming up; they’re still here, with my father.”

Rummaging through his pack, Ranma retrieved a pair of binoculars to look into the distance. Sure enough, there was a thin column of smoke rising against the background of clouds, but it was subtle and difficult to discern. Much easier to see was the intense rain. Stray droplets splattered on the lenses of the binoculars, quickly rendering them useless. With just his own unaided eyes, Ranma watched the springs fill with rainwater. In minutes, the springs could begin to flood.

“Listen, Plum,” he began, “have you been to this camp of theirs? Did you see that your old man is still there or not?”

“I didn’t want to get too close,” she said. “They might do to me whatever they wanted to do with him. They can use strong magic, Honored Guest. Their leader was ten steps out the door when she heard the telephone ring. She just swiped with her stick, and everything between her and the shack blew apart! She didn’t even have to touch it!”

“That’s not that impressive,” said Ranma, “and look—I want to get the Guide back for you, really, but I can do that a lot better as a man, not like this. Do you have a map of the springs still? I need to find the Spring of Drowned Man before everything goes to soup.”

Plum gaped at him, appalled. “Honored Guest, what are you saying? You want to go cure yourself before you save my father?”

“You don’t even know he’s still there! I can fight at least ten times better when I’m a man, and how long will this take—two minutes, tops? This is what I came here to do; I’m not leaving empty-handed.”

“But this is my father!” cried Plum. “Those people could be torturing him or hurting him or doing something else to him even right this second!”

Ranma balled his hand into a fist. Really, of all the things he’d faced to get his cure, the thing that was stopping him most right then was a little girl trying to give him a guilt trip? He’d pretended to be a girl for Kunō, the most chivalrous lecher within ten thousand miles! The humiliation of having Kunō stare at Ranma’s female body was stomach-churning, but he’d endured it. So what if Plum wanted to act like a spoiled child. He’s crossed a whole ocean and countless mountains to get his cure!

“Look, Plum,” he said, “me taking the time to go skinny-dipping for a second isn’t going to make a bit of difference! Either the Guide is still alive and they aren’t going to hurt him any more than they already have, or he’s gone and there’s nothing to be done about it anyway!”

Plum’s eyes went wide. Her mouth hung open, and her whole body began to shake. “Daddy’s gone?” she mumbled. “Daddy could be gone….”

 _Oh hell._ “Now wait a minute,” said Ranma, “that’s not what I meant! I’m sure he’s fine; he’s fine!”

But Plum bawled her eyes out. Sobbing, she clung to Ranma’s leg, and her tears soaked into the fabric of his pants. Ranma stared out the door with a sigh. The springs were awash with ripples and chaotic waves as the rain fell, but so far, they hadn’t flooded. They were safe at that moment, but they may as well have been a single mess of mixed curse water. With that innocent little girl stuck to him, there was no way he could go looking for the Spring of Drowned Man. To even try would’ve been pointlessly cruel.

So he patted Plum’s head, saying nothing, for he could find nothing worthwhile to say to a sobbing little girl.

 _Damn,_ he thought. _Why is it I have a handful of girls after me, anyway? How is that possible when I’m this much of a bastard—enough to make a little girl cry?_

There was always something keeping him from his cure, it seemed, but what was he to do? The springs would still be there the next day. He’d already spent months living with his curse. What was a few more hours? Soon enough he’d be a man again. Until then, he’d deal with being stuck in that girl’s body as a man incomplete.

“Okay, Plum,” he said to her. “If your old man is still there, I’ll go get him back. That’s a promise, understand? You stay right here. Hide out; don’t make a sound.”

Nodding, Plum released him, and Ranma ventured out, into the rain—a thickening, impenetrable downpour—with only the thin material of his poncho to keep out the wet and cold.

And as he headed back to the forest, the springs of Jusenkyō flooded over.

  


What Ranma had promised Plum was not without danger. To approach an unknown foe—or several of them—was the deed of a reckless man. Ranma could be reckless, of course, but knowing that his actions might put the Guide in danger, Ranma exercised caution. He headed into the nearby trees and worked his way around the springs, preferring not to stay in that clear area for too long. The rain was deafening; the splashing of droplets on his poncho sounded like marbles dropping on a tin roof. Even if no one else could’ve heard it, Ranma considered ditching the poncho and dealing with the rain all by himself. After all, it was loose and thin. It would give any enemies he faced an easy way to grab him and disturb his balance or momentum, but Ranma thought better of it. Dealing with sopping wet clothes or the bone-chilling cold would be much poorer alternatives. The best he could think to do was to fight with what he’d been given, what he had on him. He didn’t need weapons. Just his own two hands would do.

And as much as Ranma had wanted to get his cure and go back home, there was something strangely refreshing about the idea of going into a fight. When a man trades blows with another, the battle lines are clearly drawn. It’s just you versus your opponent. Nothing could be simpler than that. There are no entanglements, and it can only end one way: with either you or him on the floor.

Certainly that was a lot easier for Ranma to understand than being trapped between two girls as one of them wept and another stared at him in disappointment and anger. It was only just beginning to rain at that moment, too…

He pushed the memory out of his mind. He had promises to keep, one to Plum and her father included. With an arm held high to shield his face from the rain, Ranma slogged through the woods around Jusenkyō, searching for a faint trail of smoke amid darkening skies and a torrential downpour. Though his eyes were keen, Ranma never spotted that faint smoke trail again.

He found a dry bubble—a pocket of clear air—instead.

_The hell is this?_

The bubble had no well-defined surface, but raindrops turned away from it all on their own. Ranma extended his fingers into the bubble, and he felt a light pressure trying to keep him out. The bubble extended upward, well beyond Ranma’s short stature as a girl. It was big enough and wide enough that Ranma could only guess where the center was—somewhere deeper in the woods, to be sure, but where exactly…?

He stepped into the bubble, through a sheet of deflected raindrops, and left the clattering of the downpour behind. If these people who’d taken the guide were really ‘Sorcerers’ of some kind, then this dry bubble could only be their doing. It struck Ranma as massively inefficient—why would anyone waste precious magic points on such a spell when a simple animal hide tent would protect them just as well? Unless it were cheap, permanent, and easy to perform, of course. If that bubble were an easy feat for them, they just might put up a decent fight.

Going deeper into the bubble, Ranma slowed his steps, moving carefully. The clamor of the rain had faded to a distant roar, and even one broken twig could give Ranma away. He knew well how to move silently, though, and how to keep his presence undetectable to even the most attentive martial artists. That much he’d learned from his father’s stealthy thieving art, and while he’d vowed to seal those techniques away, the basic principles of bottling one’s aura to stay hidden were too useful to totally discard.

With a methodical search, heading further and further toward where he thought the center would be, Ranma glimpsed the flickering embers of a fire. He hid behind a tree trunk and turned just one eye to the campsite. The Guide sat by the fire, his wrists and ankles bound with rope. Across from him, two of the Sorcerers meditated, sitting quietly with their staves laid out by their sides. The other two Sorcerers stood by the Guide. One of them—a girl just taller than Ranma with long, reddish-brown hair—spoke with her prisoner in Chinese, and when he didn’t give her the responses she wanted, she motioned to her companion, who obligingly stuck the blunt tip of his staff into the Guide’s gut, adding a spark of lightning for good measure.

The Guide gave a sickening groan. He was beaten and bruised—that much Ranma could see. Just the way he breathed—in big, exaggerated gasps—showed he was laboring for air.

_They might’ve broken a couple of his ribs or punctured a lung. Man, what would you want the Guide for? He just works here, so why take him? Or is that the thing that all the tribes around here just like to do? People back home like to go shopping or see a movie on a weekend afternoon. I guess around here, abducting someone from a cursed spring ground is just as entertaining!_

As the Sorcerers tortured the Guide further—alternating between physical blows and blinding electrical shocks that drew unnatural, high-pitched cries—Ranma studied the situation. Facing all four of these Sorcerers at once was an unappealing prospect. He looked around for some subtle way to cause a distraction, to encourage the Sorcerers to split up. Perhaps he could throw a rock, but he spotted nothing of any size. He could dig through the ground looking for a boulder, but that would attract attention when he wasn’t ready for it, and if the only option was to attract attention…

Well, there was no point in being subtle then. Ranma turned to the tree he’d been hiding behind. He balled his fist, cocked his arm back, and punched!

CRUNCH! The wood sheared and splintered. Two of the Sorcerers leveled their staves. The tree creaked and rocked, and Ranma gave it a thundering kick!

Creak-creak-creak! The trunk tilted toward the Sorcerer encampment. The meditating Sorcerers took to their feet, grabbed their staves, and jumped away!

CRASH! The ground rumbled; the tree trunk landed on the campfire, extinguishing the flames, and the incessant deluge penetrated the camp, falling with its intolerable clatter. With the two Sorcerers who’d meditated to maintain the spell having to move, nothing could keep the rain out any longer.

And that was just as well for Ranma—more noise and distraction could only help him as he made his getaway.

“Sorry!” he shouted toward the camp. “Thought this was a logging area. Might’ve forgotten to say _timber_ there. You guys didn’t get hurt, did you? Because if you did, that makes my job easier.”

The girl with the long, reddish-brown hair reached out with her left hand, and the trees around Ranma glowed brightly with a golden hue.

_Oh, that looks bad._

The girl closed her fist, and—

BANG-BANG-BANG! The trees exploded like mortar shells, blasting wooden shrapnel in every direction. Splinters and branches bombarded Ranma, and he shielded his face to keep the small pieces out of his eyes.

_All right, time to go!_

And go he did before more of the trees could erupt around him. He ran back, toward the springs, and the Sorcerers followed—two men gave chase. It was just as he’d hoped; if they’d been smart, they would’ve stayed put at their camp and made Ranma come to them. Instead, he drew them further and further from help, chipping away at the advantage they had in numbers, but the Sorcerers didn’t make his flight from them easy. Bolts of lightning nipped at Ranma’s heels, charring the ground behind him and ringing his ears. The bolts were so close, he felt the heat from each strike on his back, and to add to the chaos, an invisible force uprooted the trees around him and threw the trunks, as if they were as light as ping-pong balls.

_Oh, sure, just keep hurling everything in the world at me; it doesn’t matter. I’ve got a plan._

A car-sized boulder rose from the ground and flung itself at Ranma, smashing him into the earth. Dirt and mud went up his nose and into his mouth.

_Well, I kind of had a plan._

Ranma crawled free of the boulder, thankful that he lived in a world where being smashed by one-ton rock was only a minor inconvenience, at least for a martial artist like him. Seeing his pursuers closing, Ranma kicked at the boulder, sending it flying back at the Sorcerers.

CRASH!

But they jumped and flew out of the way, hurtling upward into the soupy gray sky. The boulder rolled beneath them out of sight.

 _Flying with magic? Oh, come on! At least that Phoenix prick had wings to tear off and make me_ feel _better!_

The barrage of lightning strikes and thrown debris continued unabated, however, so Ranma had no time to complain about the unfairness of the Sorcerers’ advantage. He moved to negate it instead. He scrambled to his feet and jumped, landing on a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree, but he didn’t stay there for long.

CRACK! A lightning bolt struck, turning the tree he’d left to flames. Ranma hopped from tree to tree, gaining height with each jump and escaping the last with just enough time before the trees snapped themselves in two or electricity sheared off the branches he’d set upon. He searched the dark gray skies, looking for even a trace of his enemies—the flutter of black cloth in the wind, for example…

Or the glint of a metal staff tip as lightning lit up everything in the area. Ranma saw this brief sparkle, and he pushed off the treetop, catching the Sorcerer in mid-air and slamming him to the ground.

WHAM!

That was where martial arts theory and training could differ from reality. There was nothing civil and disciplined about being crouched over an enemy in a muddy crater, about bashing his face in with a flurry of punches, but that’s what Ranma did, without regret, pity, or remorse. He drew blood from the Sorcerer’s nose, and the sleeves of his clear poncho ran with a variety of colors—brown from the earth, green from short grasses, and red from blood. Though the rain ate away at these stains over time, nothing could fully erase them—not from Ranma’s mind.

The man was dazed and delirious. He made a weak moaning sound, like a crippled animal, but Ranma kept slugging him. “Be quiet!” he cried. “You don’t get to speak, hear me? All I came here to do was get some water and cure my curse, but no!”

Bam! Ranma punched him across the cheek, turning the Sorcerer’s head at an unnatural angle.

“You guys had to show up and make trouble! I don’t even know who you are!”

Crunch! He hit the Sorcerer on the nose, and there was a loud _pop_ of broken cartilage.

“I’m going home, and she’s going to see I _am_ a man, dammit! I am!”

THUD! A sharp stone flew off the ground and struck Ranma in the side with the speed of a bullet.

Ranma staggered, coming to a defensive pose as he recovered. His foe was already beaten into finely-pressed wood pulp; that phantom moving rock was nothing he could’ve done.

Ranma looked around and spotted the culprit: the second Sorcerer stood in plain sight, straight and tall, unprepared for physical combat, yet with just a slight movement of his eyes, the stone shot at Ranma again, nailing him in the back. Ranma turned to face the object and defend himself, but the stone rebounded away, like a yo-yo catching on its string.

 _Right, there’s nothing to be done to fend off a swarm of angry rocks._ Ranma turned back to the Sorcerer and charged!

Thud, thud! Stones bombarded him from all sides, smashing at his ribs, his knees, and his ankles. Ranma lost his footing, slipping in the muddy ground, but when he couldn’t walk on two feet, he bounded after the Sorcerer on all fours like a panther after its prey.

Rocks and logs zipped by Ranma’s head, unable to keep pace with him. The Sorcerer’s eyes bulged in fright, and his magic shoved a mountain of dirt in Ranma’s way. Ranma shut his eyes, hurtled through the wall of earth, and kicked blindly, not knowing if his foot would connect.

Thu-WHAM!

Soiled and dirty, Ranma came up on his own two feet, finding the Sorcerer’s body embedded halfway into a nearby tree trunk.

_That’s two._

In the pouring rain, Ranma headed back toward the Sorcerer encampment, and this time, he ran quickly, unconcerned with stealth or silence. The last embers of the campfire had faded, snuffed out by the fallen tree and a growing puddle of water. The Sorcerers had packed up their equipment into plain brown rucksacks hung over their shoulders with waxy cords. The girl with the reddish-brown hair pulled the Guide up by his ropes, freed his feet, and walked him along with his hands still bound.

But where was the other Sorcerer? Ranma looked all around for the fourth, not knowing if to expect more lightning or a telepathic mudslinger or some other bizarre magic, but when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, Ranma dove for safety.

PAM! The earth erupted; a Sorcerer smashed his staff into the ground, displacing the soil with the force of a landmine.

TCH-CHEW! A golden beam of energy shot out, grazing Ranma on the arm and disappearing as fast as it had arrived. The wound stung, feeling warm like a burn. Ranma looked back to the source—the girl with the reddish-brown hair, who tugged on the Guide’s rope to lead him away.

Ranma dashed in after them, coming after the girl, but a golden barrier rose between him and her, protecting the girl in a shimmering sphere. She yanked the Guide back behind her, and Ranma punched and punched against the gold shield. His blows bounced off harmlessly, but with each strike, he forced the girl back, one step at a time. He stayed with her, waiting, while he watched for the girl’s partner to dash in. When he glimpsed a staff twirling from the corner of his eye, he darted away, and—

WHAM! The shockwave from the staff’s impact reflected off the girl’s golden shield, knocking the attacking Sorcerer back.

“What a bitch!” said Ranma, stifling a grin. “You just stood there while your guy came in; you totally stuck him on his ass! I guess he’s not completely out of the fight right now, though.”

Ranma broke off part of the fallen tree’s trunk and, when the girl tried to shield herself, he smashed the third Sorcerer into the ground instead. 

“Well then.” Ranma wiped his hands clean in the rainwater. “I guess now he is.”

The girl glared daggers at him, still protecting herself behind the golden shield. She kept one hand on her staff and the other holding the Guide’s tethering rope. She didn’t seem keen on backing down, and while Ranma thought he’d walk all over her as long as she insisted on keeping the Guide near, a bystander’s presence could work against him, too. He’d promised Plum he’d rescue her father. A fight with him so close, beat up and bruised so he could barely limp to walk, could end very badly.

The Sorcerer under the shattered tree trunk groaned, and the girl behind the golden shield took her eyes off Ranma to look. That’s when Ranma made his decision—the best decision for everyone involved.

“I don’t like fighting girls, but if you’re going to stand there looking angry, I can rough you up as well I have the rest of your goons,” said Ranma. “Give me your prisoner, and you can go tend to your people. Guide, tell her that. Even if she can’t understand everything you say, a little is enough.”

The Guide nodded, relating Ranma’s offer in a hoarse, weak voice to the girl with the reddish-brown hair. The girl didn’t look at the Guide; she watched Ranma the whole time, and her eyes only narrowed as he finished translating Ranma’s words.

“If she doesn’t agree, then she can get a few bones broken fighting with me,” said Ranma. “Tell her to look at her people. I did to this guy what I did to the other two that she sent after me. They’re all weak—physically weak and squishy like Saffron was.”

The girl’s eyes flashed.

“For all their mighty magic,” Ranma went on, “they can’t take a direct hit. I bet this girl’s the same. You tell her that.”

It was a calculated risk—showing bravado when he himself didn’t want a fight. If there was one thing Ranma knew how to do, it was how to goad an opponent, how to needle him incessantly with insults and snide remarks until he lost his cool, but this was a different matter entirely: he had to provoke an opponent into _not_ fighting?

But the girl obliged him seemingly without argument. Before the Guide was even a quarter of the way through his translation, the girl had released his rope.

_Wait—how could she know that’s what I wanted? Did she understand me?_

If she did, she didn’t say anything to prove it. She kept up her protective shell and circled around Ranma to her fallen comrade, freeing him from the tree trunk and checking for signs of life.

“Now’s our chance.” Ranma went to the Guide and tore the rest of the rope bindings with his bare hands, freeing the Guide’s wrists. “How fast can you walk?”

“Not fast,” said the Guide.

Ranma took one of the Guide’s arms, trying to support him despite being over a foot shorter in his girl body. “Then this’ll have to do,” said Ranma, watching the girl with the long hair. “She’ll be back for you if we don’t get out of here soon enough.”

“Why…?” The Guide breathed heavily, every step forcing exertion from him. “Why you think that?”

Because the girl with the golden magic barrier met Ranma’s gaze, following him and the Guide with her eyes until they were too far through the trees to watch anymore.

  


With the Guide struggling to walk, Ranma knew they wouldn’t get far. That was probably what the girl was counting on. She’d see if any of her people were still battle-worthy and then come back with renewed force, knowing that Ranma was a threat. Though Ranma had come out of his scrape with the Sorcerers fairly well, he wasn’t exactly unscathed. His sides ached with bruises. His poncho had torn, exposing him to the rain, and his knuckles ached from the blows he’d delivered to the first Sorcerer. All in all, it was not what he’d had in mind when he’d set out for China.

_It had to be magic Sorcerers. Why couldn’t it be something easy like, I dunno, Martial Arts Mahjong players? I could’ve handled people being overly dramatic when they put down tiles. Being out here in the freezing rain, fighting again for life and limb…_

He shook off the thought. Everything he’d done there was the result of a promise he’d made or a goal he’d set for himself. At least no one could accuse him of doing the unmanly thing, of not following through on what he’d set out to do. It might even make for a good story once he claimed his cure and made his way back home, if there were someone who’d be willing to hear it and someone he’d want to tell it to.

But first things were first. Ranma had to get the Guide out of there, away from Jusenkyō. The girl and her companions would likely come searching, and the more of them who could move about and walk, the less time Ranma and the Guide would have. They’d start with the Guide’s shack, Ranma reasoned, so the first thing to do was go back, retrieve Plum, and get as far away as possible. When he and the Guide came within shouting distance of the shack, Ranma called out to Plum, and she came running out with little more than a plastic bag over her head to keep her dry.

“Daddy, Daddy, you’re alive!” she cried, hugging her father’s leg tightly. “Honored Guest, thank you! I knew you’d come through!”

“Don’t get too excited,” said Ranma. “Those goons are still out there; we have to move. I’ve got a camp just a little ways from here, so let’s get going. We ain’t safe yet, and you’d be a fool to think otherwise.”

“Honored Guest quite right, but if you not come back to springs, I’d still be in their hands.” The Guide limped along, prying Plum free from his injured leg. “What good fortune that you come back.”

Ranma looked away. “I dunno if fortune had anything to do with it. In fact, I’m pretty sure it didn’t do anything at all.”

“Fortune that you broke the cask,” the Guide insisted. “That’s why you come, no?”

Ranma eyed the mountain, whose peak was obscured behind cloud cover. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Forgive me,” said the Guide, “but I ask because they were curious.”

“Who? Those Sorcerers?”

“Yes. They ask about the person who dealt with Saffron. They wanted to know what happened three weeks ago, if there had been some kind of event or battle here.” The Guide touched a hand to his temple, straining. “Yes, very specific about date. Twenty-three days ago now, I think. The day you killed—”

“I don’t want to talk about that, either,” said Ranma. “We all know what happened then. Just why are they asking about me? You didn’t tell them anything, did you? Did you tell them who I am? Did you tell them my name?”

“No, no, not a word,” the Guide promised him. “That why they beat and shock me. I mistake them for friends of Phoenix Tribe, so I no answer.”

Ranma nodded at that, saying nothing, for already his mind had begun to race. It was in the shadow of Mount Kensei that he’d fought before, just as the Guide had said, and yes, he’d killed a man to save a life. So what if he’d taken pleasure in doing it, if he’d felt relief and joy in the moments after? That was one moment in time, a moment he could’ve put behind him and forgotten had he not needed to return to China.

And he’d almost lived that moment over again as he’d bashed in that Sorcerer’s face with his bare hands.

By way of a softening trail, Ranma led the Guide and his daughter Plum away from the spring ground, and it wasn’t far to the spot where Ranma had left Kunō tied to a tree. The poor, deluded man greeted his cherished pigtailed girl with delight.

“My darling! At last, you return for me! Oh, what a terrible mistake it was, believing my sister would pack us a genuine token of goodwill!”

Ranma rolled his eyes. “I dunno who you’re talking about, but I’m not the one who made any kind of mistake.”

“But surely you gave me that poisoned biscuit not knowing how tainted it was?”

The Guide eyed Kunō strangely. “Honored Guest, this man not know who you are?”

“Nope,” said Ranma, taking a knife to Kunō’s ropes. “Monopoly Man here has an excellent echo chamber inside his skull, if you know what I mean.”

“Ah, yes of course!” cried Kunō. “I’ve been told I have well-shaped sinus cavities that give my voice a pleasant timbre. Perhaps I should recite some poetry for you?”

With an exaggerated sigh, Ranma slapped his palm on his forehead. There was no other way to get the idiot to shut up, so Ranma cleared his throat. “Sempai, there are bad bad men after the friendly guide here! You should _stop talking_ so they don’t hear you!”

Kunō blinked. “But you’re still talking.”

 _Now you decide to be smart?_ “That’s because my voice is so high they can’t hear it! Hehe.”

“I see. Then, in defense of this honorable guide, I, Kunō Tatewaki, shall help escort him to safety!”

Ranma pressed a finger to his lips, hissing.

“…silently,” Kunō added with a whisper.

With one annoyance taken care of, Ranma slowed to the back of the group, and in a low voice, he spoke only to the Guide and Plum. “We’ll go back to Yushu and hang out for a couple days. Hopefully, those Sorcerer freaks will have cleared out by then.”

“And if not?” asked the Guide.

“Well, that’ll just be inconvenient for you; either way, I’m getting what I came here for. I’m not going home like this.” Ranma squeezed one of the mounds of fatty flesh on his chest. “If they’re still here, then it’ll just be a fight for it. That doesn’t scare me.”

“If Honored Guest can lead us back to town at all,” said the Guide, struggling to keep pace despite support from Ranma. “I walk slow; night will come before we reach Yushu halfway.”

Ranma knew that well. Though each step put more distance between the group and Jusenkyō, those steps were too slow and small to be enough. The girl whom Ranma had left behind would find them—Ranma expected that much, and when his skin began to tingle and a disturbance sped over the treetops, he was prepared. There was only one course of action to take to protect the Guide whom these Sorcerers were after and for Ranma to claim the cure he’d been so long without.

“Kunō,” he said, “take the Guide and Plum to town. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Not a chance, pigtailed girl! I couldn’t possibly leave you here!”

Forcing a tense smile to his face, Ranma pleaded with Kunō in the sweetest voice he could muster. “But Sempai, it will be so amazing when you lead these nice, innocent people to safety! I’ll stitch your name into my panties and everything!”

Kunō’s eyes went wide. “Into your pa-pa-pa-panties? But, you mustn’t say such things, pigtailed girl! I cannot abandon you; I—”

Ranma touched Kunō’s chest, and the upperclassman went as red as a beet.

“Pigtailed girl?”

Those small, feminine hands clenched Kunō’s clothes like a vice. Ranma spun, flinging Kunō about like a child swings a weight on a string. “Why don’t you just do what you’re told for once, moron?”

That was the last Kunō heard of his darling pigtailed girl that day, for Ranma hurled him on a low arc through the woods, and Kunō landed somewhere out of sight with a satisfying thud, rustling in the brush.

And it wasn’t a moment too soon to get rid of Kunō, for the disturbance in the treetops landed before Ranma and the Guide with a rippling wave that cut through the rain. The girl with the reddish-brown hair stood straight and upright with her staff in hand and her stare fixed solely on Ranma.

“Go on now, Guide, Plum,” said Ranma. “I’ll handle this.”

The Guide took a fallen tree branch and used it as a walking stick to help him limp away from the scene, and Plum followed closely at his heels. Ranma circled around to put Plum and the Guide at his back. He made himself the obstacle for the Sorcerer girl to go through.

“Well?” Ranma called out to her. “What do you have to say for yourself now? The Guide’s getting away, and you’re all alone. Maybe you should just give up. Go back home and practice card tricks. I hear that kind of magic really surprises people.”

The girl with reddish-brown hair raised her free hand, and the golden, spherical barrier took shape around her, shimmering as raindrops touched it. She said nothing in response to Ranma’s jives. Her stony expression had hardly changed at all.

“All business, huh?” said Ranma. “Suits me fine, then. Let’s go!”

He charged at her with fists and feet in a flurry, assaulting the golden barrier with a barrage of punches and kicks. Each blow pushed the girl back—sometimes as much as a few inches, sometimes less—but the barrier held.

_You can hide behind that wall all day if you want, but you’re the one coming after me. Sooner or later, you have to attack. That’s when I’ll get to you. It’s just a matter of time before you drop that barrier to do it._

The golden shield flattened and grew. With both hands, the Sorcerer girl shaped it from a distance, forming an impenetrable bubble as tall as three men.

_Oh, come on. Are you serious?_

And then she pushed.

CRUNCH, BANG, SMASH! The barrier expanded, pushing Ranma back like a tidal wave breaking on a beach, except the surf he rode in was a rough mixture of broken trees, dirt, and rock. The golden wall dissipated quickly, and Ranma tumbled through the mess of debris like a ragdoll—a soiled, scratched, and pummeled doll at that.

 _All right,_ maybe _you can put up a fight after all!_

Ranma sprang to his feet, eyes open, searching for his foe, but he didn’t have to look for very long. A shimmering beam connected them, glowing and persistent. It was like a tether from his chest to the girl’s open hand, and from that, Ranma felt a tugging sensation—a weakening of his own aura that strengthened his opponent instead.

“So what, you don’t need a hollow coin to suck the fighting spirit from me?” Ranma called out to her. “Does that actually make you grow breasts, or do you stay as flat as you are right now?”

TCH-CHEW! A beam of golden energy passed through his body, carrying with it no momentum, no force, but Ranma’s chest burned with heat, as if someone had placed a Bunsen burner in his lungs. A tree behind him exploded in flames, and Ranma took to a knee, trying to catch his breath.

_Damn you’re sneaky!_

But Ranma didn’t dwell on the pain. He’d known worse. There was a reason he was in China, and no puny tribal Sorcerer girl was going to get in his way. She faced him there, in the woods around Jusenkyō, and though Ranma had reeled from her knockback attack and her penetrating beam, not once had she even moved a step toward the path—the trail that the Guide, Plum, and Kunō were retreating on. Either she or Ranma would be the victor, and only once that was settled would the matter of Ranma’s cure or her questions for the Guide be dealt with.

_Fine by me. Let’s finish this, then!_

He charged her again, but this time, he was ready for her tricks. When she meant to push him away with her expanding barrier, he retreated on his own and circled around to get back at her. He feinted with a kick at her legs, and that distracted her long enough to weaken her barrier up high. A right hook of Ranma’s connected, drawing blood from her nose, and her wooden staff clattered on the ground.

“Don’t worry,” said Ranma. “The blood doesn’t really ruin your looks. You weren’t that pretty to begin with.”

The staff flew through the air on its own, back into the girl’s hands, and at last, her stoic expression gave way to a definite scowl.

“What, you do understand me?” Ranma pressed. “Then you should know I’m just getting warmed up. Come on! What are you waiting for?”

The combatants charged each other, and that time, the Sorcerer girl didn’t hide behind her magic barrier. She imbued her staff with energy, giving it a radiant glow, and each swing and thrust of the weapon sparked magic through the air. Ranma bore the brunt of these painful jolts, but pain was in the mind, and burns would soon go through the skin to leave desensitized nerves that felt nothing. Ranma didn’t try to keep up with her strikes, though. She was fast—unnaturally fast. She dodged the bulk of his attacks like she’d seen them on film the night before and had worked out the choreography to avoid them, so Ranma didn’t waste his time. He focused on his footwork, on keeping cool despite the heat and warmth that coursed through him every time the Sorcerer girl landed a blow. He let her run rings around him, for that was all part of his plan. The girl had expended much hot, energetic ki into the air. It was the stuff that made her magic blows painful, and Ranma knew well how to turn an opponent’s energies against her. He led the girl in a circle as the air crackled with her golden ki magic, and with a single upward punch—

CRACK!

He spawned a tornado unlike anything he’d ever seen or created. Bolts of golden ki shot from it, zapping the Sorcerer girl as she rose upward, ever higher, unable to break free of the wind.

Ranma took to a knee, panting, and admired his work. He would have to think of a name for that maneuver. Flying Dragon’s Ascent Storm, perhaps? That would have to do. His body ached; his skin was tender and red in places, and even the cold rain falling from the sky did little to soothe his burns.

When he heard a pronounced thud at a small distance, Ranma trudged through the dissipating tornado, hoping to find his opponent beaten and broken, but it wasn’t so.The Sorcerer girl climbed to her feet, using her staff as a support. Her hair was frazzled and dripping. She staggered with her steps, but she looked him in the eye, her gaze hard and unwavering.

_Not over yet? All right; bring it on!_

She waved a hand over the ground, and the earth itself began to glow and shimmer. Ranma took to a foot to jump, but—

TCHEW-TCHEW-TCHEW! The soil exploded with pulsing, penetrating heat, and he fell. He fell into a dark chasm that opened beneath him, and rock and mud piled on top. He clawed and kicked at the pit, but soil filled it in faster than he could dig himself out. The gray sky disappeared, going dark behind the mud, and with each moment, Ranma felt a terrible crushing weight that grew and pushed against him, trying to force him further down. He was like an ant drowning in molasses, and the more he struggled, the more he realized he had nowhere to go. There was no air down there, no way to see or know which way was up. There was only darkness, cold, earth, and water.

Water.

Water was his enemy, the reason he couldn’t be a man all the time. How fitting it was that he would fail there, so close to the waters that’d cursed him, so close to the one spring that held his cure.

He would be defeated—he might even die—as a girl. Not as a man. He hadn’t earned that dignity after all, so he closed his eyes to sleep—to sleep perchance to dream. To dream of places far away from that cold, dark hole. He wished for some place bright and warm, and he found that in his memories.

What he found in his mind was the swirling inferno over Mount Kensei as the flame-throwing bird-man sneered and taunted him. He felt the tiny doll stuffed into the neck of his shirt, her eyes drooping lower and lower with each passing second. Such a tumult of emotions he’d felt then: anxiety, knowing that he was losing time; rage at the bird-man who stood in his way despite all reason; and emptiness, for when he slew that monster and revived the doll, the girl he held there wouldn’t breathe. For whole minutes, she’d lain naked and lifeless in his arms, and that drew tears from him. Even a man could cry over the dead, couldn’t he?

But eventually, she came to, and they’d had a chance to get to know each other once again, to walk to school together like nothing had happened, yet Ranma focused on that emptiness, that moment when he thought all was lost. He opened the way for these melancholic thoughts to consume him, for if he died there under the earth, without even his cure to show for his trouble, he’d have just lost her again. These feelings cut at his heart; they hollowed him out into an empty shell, one that relived over and over a scene of abject helplessness until all that was left was a forlorn husk.

A husk that would be undamaged when the weight of his depression came crashing down in a ball of pink and purple light—the perfect Shishi Hōkōdan. The ball of ki blasted through the earth, leaving a crater with Ranma freed at the center. He wiped his face in the rain, and he breathed.

_Sorry, Ryōga—I just had to borrow that for a sec. Despair is your thing, not mine, but I have known it once or twice. I don’t know how you can take doing that to yourself over and over, because that scares the shit out of me. Even just that one time, when I thought she was gone…_

He shook off the thought. He had no need of those feelings any longer, and if he could’ve banished them outright and made them something outside himself—like the image of the pigtailed girl he saw in mirrors—he would’ve done just that, but that didn’t make the sentiment fake or unreal. Far from it: would the ball of ki come down at all if his feelings at that moment hadn’t been real?

And for that depression and his drive to reclaim his manhood, he had just one person to thank.

_Kunō, Plum, Guide—you guys all asked me what I’m doing here. It’s to make myself a man again, yeah, but I never told you who I wanted to prove it to. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself. Akane, if you could see me now…_

He looked to the east, where Japan would be, but in the cloudy sky, he saw nothing different in that direction compared to any other. That thought he could finish when he’d earned his cure, when there wasn’t a threat to him or the Guide any longer.

Ranma climbed to the edge of the crater, shading his eyes from the rain. Where was the Sorcerer girl? He looked around, spotting only her staff on the far side of the crater and a small indentation in the ground. He trotted over and saw more clearly what had happened: the Sorcerer girl had been buried, just like him, but through the force of the Shishi Hōkōdan. Only a hand remained above ground, and the fingers moved weakly, without direction or strength.

So it was. Ranma had won, and he could leave his opponent underground to die. It would be a fitting punishment after all the trouble she’d caused—not only for himself but for the Guide, too. That way, if the other Sorcerers knew what was good for them and didn’t come back, Ranma would be free to claim his cure and go home once the spring waters receded and the pools were safe. He would be a man again. And if he walked away then and there, all it would cost was one more life. The Sorcerer girl was defeated, and she knew it.

Just like the partridge he’d held in his hands.

Ranma made it about ten steps from the crater before he stopped to ponder that thought. When he’d first killed a man, it was necessary. His enemy was dangerous and fiery and volatile; there was no coexistence with him, and Ranma took pleasure in punishing him for his arrogance and selfishness because of the person that man had wronged. One person—the same girl he was so eager to prove himself to. She’d helped him land that deathblow, but she wouldn’t approve of this. That girl in the earth had kept him from his cure, kept him from going back home, but there were no more lives in danger. To leave her in the dirt to die would be ruthless and cold, and if he did it in someone else’s name, that would be even worse.

So Ranma crouched in the crater, took the Sorcerer girl’s hand, and pulled. His feet sank in the mud, but he yanked and tugged at the girl all the same. “Come on, dammit, you’ve got magic powers, don’t you? Give me some traction here! Do something to help save your own pitiful life!”

The ground beneath him dried, in defiance of the rain falling all around Ranma, and only then did he find the strength to rip that girl from the clutches of the earth. They fell together into a heap on the surface of the crater. The girl was cut and scraped all over, and a bruise had started to develop over her left eye, which she could hardly keep open. She turned over, onto her back, and stared at Ranma questioningly.

“Do you understand me?” he asked. “Do you or don’t you?”

The girl nodded once, saying nothing.

“Then you’re welcome,” he said. “Don’t hesitate to thank me. You know, if you can speak.”

The girl opened her mouth, and her voice came out hesitantly. “Thank you,” she said in deliberate but precise Japanese.

Ranma huffed. It was little consolation. He was soaking wet despite his poncho, which bore traces of blood and dirt that the rain just wouldn’t wash away. The springs were flooded, and both combatants suffered scratches and bruises from their battle. The Guide’s shack was ashambles. All this destruction—what was it for?

This girl in front of him had asked the Guide about Saffron—about Saffron and the person who fought against him. Though she couldn’t know it, that person was Ranma. He could leave her there, and she might never know, but the girl’s look told him she would never stop hunting for him. As soon as she could stand on her own and walk, she would go looking for the Guide again, and after that, it would only be a matter of time before she heard about Ranma and what he’d done.

Ranma had already put curing his curse off for too long. To let another wound fester would be the height of arrogance and folly. He stood over the Sorcerer girl, looking down on her from above. “What is it you want? Why the hell did you come here?”

“To save ourselves,” she said. “Saffron can help us. You know him, don’t you?”

Ranma made a face, panicking. She couldn’t know that. How could she? The Guide hadn’t said anything to her!

 _They’re all weak,_ he’d said. _Weak and squishy like Saffron was!_

His heart sank. It wasn’t the Guide. Uknowingly, Ranma had betrayed himself, and the Sorcerer girl’s keen gaze all but confirmed it to be true.

“Me?” said Ranma, touching a finger to his chest. “No, I have no idea who you’re talking about, not a clue—”

There was a sharp, stinging sensation on Ranma’s thigh. He looked down, and he saw the girl had stuck him with a bamboo needle, and already, just standing there, he felt woozy on his feet.

“If that is true,” the girl went on, “then meeting the Lady will only prove it so.”

Ranma’s strength left him, and he cursed himself out over helping that girl. He collapsed in the crater, rolling to the bottom, and as his vision darkened, he caught one last glimpse of the Sorcerer girl as she picked him up and draped him over her shoulder. So many questions he had—why they would want him after having questioned the Guide, for instance…

Or why, when he looked at the girl’s fingers as she carried him, he spotted the bubbly residue of waterproof soap.

His mouth went numb; his eyes closed, and Ranma faded away into drug-induced sleep. Not knowing where the Sorcerer girl would carry him or how far away their destination would be, the last thing Ranma felt was the cold, incessant rain pouring down on his neck.


	2. The Village

Ranma opened his eyes to light and shadow, to shapes formless and unclear. Birds called to one another, singing their songs of mating. His vision came to focus on a wall of green and yellow straw, which enclosed a single room. Sunlight streamed through gaps in the fibers, casting streaks across an animal-skin rug. The rest of the floor was cold dirt.

Ranma picked himself up off the ground, his head pounding with pain. His tongue was dry, and he shied away from the light, averting his eyes. His body ached all over, as if he’d been in an all-day training session with his father to learn some arcane thieving technique—not that he’d ever tried something like that before.

All kidding himself aside, Ranma thought it best to check himself for injuries. Feeling a raw, tender sensation on his wrist, Ranma stuck his arm into the light, and the sun uncovered an area of pronounced irritation and redness.

 _Rope burns,_ he thought.

He rubbed at his ankles, feeling more of the same. Those Sorcerers—they’d tied him to a stick like a pig to roast over a fire, except he was still alive. Somewhere in his drug-induced haze, Ranma remembered breaking free of his captors, snapping the ropes they’d used to bind him. He’d fled across a dry, flat stretch of arid plateau, but that hadn’t gone over so well. When the Sorcerers had caught up to him, Ranma had fought as best he could, despite his addled mind, but with four against one, it was inevitable that one of his foes would stick him or scratch him with a bamboo needle.

Ranma felt his right thigh, and sure enough, the fabric was broken in two places over a pair of circular wounds.

_Guess they really must’ve wanted me to stay nice and quiet on the way here._

And just where exactly was he, anyway?

Ranma looked across the hut—a small, dark space only big enough for four or five men to sit in—to an opening in the straw. It was a doorway without a door, and the sunlight outside was so bright to Ranma’s eyes that it blinded him. Still, he took to his feet, knocking over a clay bowl of kidney beans, and made for the doorway, squinting.

After a few moments, his vision adapted. Ranma found himself in a river valley—a pocket of fertility amid the harsh, inhospitable Tibetan Plateau. Between two mountainous ridges the river ran, and alongside it, a village had been built out of a smattering of huts and plots of farmland. Thick forests marked the borders of the settlement, all very typical and uninteresting, but one feature drew his attention. Far downriver, a dark spire loomed. Its height rivaled the two ridges on either side of the valley. It was an attention-grabbing landmark. For miles around, hikers and travelers must’ve noticed it.

_Not exactly big fans of subtlety, are we, Sorcerers. Wow, I’m really impressed by a big freaking tower._

Ranma looked around, seeing only unsuspecting villagers. A pair of farmers strolled by his hut with a cart of wheat and barley, but neither man drove the load. Instead, the cart rolled on its own, steering without a hand to guide it. The men eyed Ranma strangely, looking him up and down, but they said nothing. They hardly broke stride as they passed by.

Evidently, these Sorcerers weren’t very bright, for they liked to build huge towers that would surely be spotted when they were _supposed_ to have disappeared. Ranma could think of few ways more ineffective at staying hidden than that, and as far as Ranma could see, he’d been left all alone. There were no guards; there was no one watching him unless, say, they could make themselves invisible. Even then, that wasn’t a huge deterrent. Ranma scanned the edge of the valley, where the cleared land gave way to mountainous terrain and trees, and he spotted no guards at all.

_Of course there are no guards. That’d be impractical to put men every half-meter around the edge of the village._

And that meant there was no barrier to his escape.

He walked toward the edge of the village casually, without hurry or haste in his stride. There was no reason to attract undue attention. Granted, the bright red color of his shirt probably attracted more attention than he could handle, but that was nothing he could change right away. He would have plenty of other factors working against him: the Sorcerers could fly, after all, so Ranma had to admit they had an advantage in speed. That meant running for his life in the open wasn’t a great option; the best thing to do was to try _not_ to run like a madman. Once he made it to the trees, the Sorcerers would have to search an unimaginable area for him, and that would give him a real opportunity for escape.

But it was just an opportunity, for he had no map, no water, and no food. He could head east and hope to run into civilization. The river that flowed through the village might be safe to stop and drink at once he’d put some distance between him and the Sorcerers, but they might think of that, too. As for food, well, it wouldn’t be the first time Ranma found himself in the middle of nowhere going hungry. He’d survived that before; he’d just have to survive again.

 _We’ll just have a nice, fancy feast on roasted squirrels and other local “delicacies” when I get back to Yushu. Kunō can foot the bill, and then I’ll go back to Jusenkyō._ He pulled the fabric of his shirt taut, flattening the breasts of his female body against his chest. _Then I can get rid of these and do what I came here to do._

Behind a patch of rhubarb, Ranma slipped into the forest. Indeed, his escape had been all too easy. Who did these people think they were? Did they believe themselves so powerful that no one could possibly escape? What a joke! No wonder they had problems holding on to the Guide. They could really stand to wise up. For all the trouble they’d gone through to find Saffron, they hadn’t even gone to the right place. Why didn’t they just go to Mount Phoenix and get that cleared up? What did they even want with the man, anyway?

 _To save themselves,_ thought Ranma. _That’s what she said, right? Ridiculous. Saffron only ever cared about himself anyway. He would never be of much help to anybody, especially now…._ Ranma shuddered. _Well, the less said about goddamn Saffron the better._

So Ranma moved on. He headed east, toward one of the rocky ridges that ran along the edge of the valley. Not wanting to climb right over, Ranma tried to find a way around. He made for a gap in the trees—a small clearing with sparse, yellowed grasses. The skies were blue with patches of fast-moving clouds, and the ridge in front of Ranma sported trees until just short of the mountain’s peak. The sun had risen roughly ten degrees above that, so Ranma looked upon the ridge with a hand up to shade his eyes.

 _Let’s go upriver then._ Ranma put the mountain on his right and moved on, wading into the trees once more. The key to finding your way around unfamiliar territory was to keep your eye on a fixed point of reference in the distance—whether that be a mountain in the daylight or the pole star at night. With only the mountain looming above the trees, Ranma used that to guide him. Odds were he wouldn’t circle the mountain in the span of ten minutes, after all, so there would be no harm in keeping it firmly on his right. Logically, nothing of the sort could possibly happen!

So when Ranma found himself in another sparse clearing, he looked to his right, seeing the mountain there, and to the left, though the trees, where the village must’ve been, and frowned. The clearing was eerily silent. When he’d opened his eyes in that straw hut, the calls of birds had been melodic and incessant, yet in that clearing, there were no sounds of animals at all. Only the rustling of the wind disturbed the silence, and Ranma stood still for a moment, feeling the currents and eddies of the air as the wind whipped by him.

_Something isn’t right here._

There was a rustling in the woods. A twig snapped, and then nothing.

Ranma tensed up. Someone had found him? Ranma didn’t stick around to find out. He dashed off for the far side of the clearing; better to get away than even to stand and fight. Taking the time to investigate and silence a potential threat would slow him down. Better to run. There were no points for defeating foes only to be captured in the end. So he ran, not looking back.

Only to end up right where he’d started again—the impossible clearing—except this time, there was someone else. The girl with the reddish-brown hair, the leader of the Sorcerer party, held her staff upright with one end. “You’re wasting your time,” she said, slowly and deliberately, thinking over every word before she said it. “Only a Sorcerer can navigate the Maze.”

Ranma stomped past her. “This doesn’t look like any kind of maze I’ve ever seen. And why do you speak Japanese, anyway? Is that standard in tribal curriculum after basket-weaving and psychic projection?”

The Captain narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to be irritating?”

“Oh, you know, I tend to get pissed when people do certain things: when people don’t clean up after themselves, when I ask for shrimp ramen takeout and get chicken instead, when I’m kidnapped by people I’d never heard of and hogtied. I’d think you would be pretty pissed off if those happened to you, too.” Ranma cocked his head. “Or maybe you don’t mind chicken ramen so much. You’re not that twisted, are you? Because only truly heinous people like chicken ramen.”

Sighing, the Captain tapped her staff on the ground. “Come with me. You have no chance of escaping the Maze.”

“How’s that? What if I beat you senseless? Does it stop?”

“No.”

“And if I want to take my chances?”

The Captain tilted her staff at a nearby tree. “Look for yourself.”

Puzzled, Ranma obliged her. He shimmied up the tree trunk into the canopy, but what awaited him there was a dizzying sight. The view of the his surroundings shifted every time he turned his head. First the mountain was behind him, then in front of him, then somewhere else entirely, but the one constant was an image in the distance. A girl far away clung to the top of a tree, staring into space. Ranma waved a hand at her, and she waved back, mirroring his movements. When he stopped, so did she.

_Are you serious? A forest that wraps around so I can look at my own ass?_

Not that it was unpleasant to look at. Indeed, it was at least as well-shaped as those of most girls he knew—but that was emphatically not the point!

Ranma jumped down from the canopy and blinked a couple times to straighten out his sight. “All right, that was a bit of a trip. What the hell is with this forest? How does it work?”

“It takes dozens of men meditating at all hours to channel the spell. Anyone who enters is trapped irrevocably unless they can feel the flows and eddies of ki and sense the illusion. It protects us from outsiders and, when necessary, keeps them in.”

“And why on earth would you want to keep me here?” asked Ranma. “Clearly we don’t get along well.”

“The Lady would like an audience with you.”

“Oh really? And why should I listen to anything you people have to say?”

“Because you’re capable of mercy, and we recognize that,” said the Captain. “ _I_ recognize that.” She gestured to the trees and the ground. “Going outside the Maze—that isn’t our way, but you’re in a position to help us, Outsider, and we _need_ your help.”

“Even if you have to take it by force,” Ranma cut in.

The Captain nodded solemnly. “For that, and for what you did, you’re owed a debt. Help us, and I will walk you through this Maze myself. I promise you that.”

Ranma scoffed. Help them with what? With finding Saffron? He wasn’t going anywhere. Still, Ranma wasn’t about to let that slip from his lips so easily. As earnest and impassioned the Captain’s speech had been, Ranma knew well that promises only mattered as much as a person could be trusted. She’d already stabbed him in the back (or in the leg, as it happened) for his generosity and mercy once before.

But he also had little choice in the matter, and the Captain reinforced the point by making a gesture toward the woods with her hand. From the forest came four more Sorcerers, wielding staves.

If all they wanted to do was talk, he could listen and then decide. If he couldn’t force his way out, the only option was to hear what these Sorcerers had to say.

  


The girl called herself Wuya, but to her men and the rest of the villagers, she was addressed only as _Captain_. For someone with such a position of authority, Wuya looked rather young. Ranma guessed she couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Then again, it wasn’t like she was ordering around people twice his age, either. The guards might’ve been a couple years older, if that, and most of the villagers were the same. Indeed, Ranma spotted hardly a man or woman over forty as he walked through the village. Perhaps it was an artifact of short life expectancy out in the wild, or maybe using magic all their lives made them age prematurely and die. There were a hundred good reasons for it, yet Ranma found none of them comforting.

_It wasn’t just that forest. There’s something off with this whole village._

Ranma thought it best not to ask questions about matters that didn’t concern him, though. He wouldn’t be staying long. Those people wanted Saffron; that was the only thing truly relevant to him. Ranma asked the Captain about her people’s interest in the Phoenix King, getting a cryptic answer in turn.

“The magic we wield—how we manipulate the flows of ki in everything we touch—is what makes our people strong and unique, but it also carries with it a great danger if we can’t keep it in check.”

“Really? What happens then?” asked Ranma. “You guys become the magical equivalent of crackheads?”

The Captains stared.

“Drug addicts. Every society in the whole world uses drugs. People have been boozing for over five thousand years.” Ranma looked the Captain up and down her stiff exterior. “You look to me like a shrooms girl.”

Wuya looked ahead, silence her only answer.

“Nothing? Well, I guess that makes sense. You strike me as the dry and humorless type. Throw yourself all the way into your work, huh? Probably never touched a guy in your life.”

“Why would I want to touch a man?”

Ranma eyed her warily. “Don’t stand so close to me, then. This body only lasts until I can find some hot water, I’ll have you know. It’s those springs, right? They do funny things to you.”

“We’ve lived in this valley for thousands of years,” said the Captain. “We know what the spring ground can do.”

“You think there’s a spring that can wipe that constant scowl off your face? Because honestly, it’s creeping me out.”

To Wuya’s bemused expression, the party walked on. As they approached the tower, the farmers’ fields gave way to rocky crags and sparse weeds, and in the distance, away from the banks, the tree line followed, hugging the edges of the valley. The group moved along the western bank, steering clear of the swollen river’s wet, slippery stones. The waters accelerated, crashing together as roaring rapids before falling off the edge of a cliff, yet the black tower’s base was shrouded in the mists of the waterfall.

“Nice tower,” said Ranma. “It’s big and tall and long. You guys didn’t build it to compensate for something, did you? Must’ve taken a while.”

The Captain glared. “It took three months to design but only one to build. The Lady commanded her people to rip the rock directly from the earth if they had to. It is the Lady’s tower—the heart of our village built anew, a refuge of the knowledge and arts of our people dating back for over a thousand years.”

Ranma rolled his eyes. “You can spare me the tour guide spiel next time. But who is this Lady?”

“She has guided us since before I can remember. She is the leader of our people. Through me, she instructs the Sorcerer Guard. Through the High Priestess, Henna, she instructs the clergy in the history of healing. She has watched over this village for decades, ensuring that we are safe from the outside and from the magics we wield.”

Ranma frowned. _Safe from their own magic, huh? How is Saffron supposed to help with that?_

Through thick mist, the party descended down a steep cliffside path, and Ranma saw more of the tower and its grounds. The spire sat atop a series of stone rings, each packed with earth and stacked on top of each other as if a child had built them with premade blocks. The rings shrunk with each level, culminating in the narrow spire. It was a fortress of dark stone, pristine down to the men and women who walked its grounds.

The path wrapped around a pool at the base of the waterfall, and a crowd of interested villagers, servants, and guards stood at the side of the path. The Captain’s warriors greeted her by tapping their staves on the ground, giving the group a noisy welcome as they approached. The gate to the outermost ring was made of two slabs of stone, and the guards parted them with magic, not even needing to lay a finger on the rock. The party emerged from an earthen tunnel onto the outskirts of the tower grounds: a courtyard and training area. On these fields, men and women sparred with one another, throwing punches or calling down lightning to smite their partners. To the last man, they were clad in black, just as the Captain who walked with him was.

“So these are your men,” Ranma said to the Captain.

“They are of the Sorcerer Guard,” said Wuya, leading the party to the next gate. “Every day they train to serve and protect this village, sacrificing the comforts of their personal lives, of—” Her eyes flashed, and she paused. “They sacrifice much,” she said at last. “While they are on the grounds, they are trained by my second, Xiu.”

Wuya pointed him out; he was a short boy of dark complexion and big black eyes. The Captain’s second paced the outer ring, intervening in sparring matches when his subordinates showed poor form or maneuvers. He shouted corrections to their faces, demonstrated his superior execution on their bodies, throwing a man into the wall of the next ring. And when that man fell to the ground amidst rubble and dirt, Xiu walked away to shout at the next pair of warriors that offended him.

“Nice guy,” said Ranma.

Wuya nodded. “He isn’t known for his good demeanor.”

With each gate the group passed, they delved deeper into the compound. The Sorcerer Guard, on training duty, occupied most of the outer rings, but their exercises varied from level to level. Sometimes they sparred directly, like on the first ring. On others, they focused on the more magical aspects of their arts. They shot fire from their fingertips, and the roots of the earth sprouted to bind their foes.

On the inner rings, the warriors of the Guard made way for priests and healers. Medics erased sores from the skin; weak, atrophied muscles bulged to full strength and function, and their owner walked on legs that wouldn’t carry him just ten minutes before.

“It’s difficult to practice magic on people,” said Wuya. “The body resists invasion from these energies. One must be trained to use the arts for healing.”

“Or using them for combat, right?” asked Ranma.

Wuya shook her head. “There are some things we do not practice. I fear what would happen if those lessons were used for war instead.”

“Even the Guard doesn’t know how?”

“It is forbidden.”

Ranma nodded. “Sounds like you people at least have some sense about you. I think I call that a good thing.”

“I would say the same. Magic is not to be used lightly.”

“Tell me about it.”

The Captain eyed him cautiously.

“You’re the ones who want my help,” said Ranma. “Call me curious. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Looking ahead, the Captain sighed quietly and relented. “There are several expressions of ki magic. There is the physical expression, which involves moving objects at a distance or making ice from water by sapping heat from it. There is the corporeal expression, which can be used to enhance one’s own strength and speed, to heal others or cause decay. Finally, there is the mental expression—the use of magic to sense the world or influence minds. The Guard practices the physical expression most; the priests are the only ones with enough training to heal significant injuries.”

“And the mental aspect? You guys don’t do psychic stuff?”

“Some do use it to detect an enemy’s strike before it comes. The channelers specialize in illusions, as I’ve said, but influencing others’ minds is not their role. No free man is permitted to practice such magic.”

“What about you? Your techniques don’t seem to fit this tidy scheme.”

At last, a tiny smile came to the Captain’s face. “No, they don’t. The most powerful of all magics is ki wielded in its purest form. I’ve trained for years to master it, and I am very good at what I do.”

“Not good enough,” muttered Ranma.

The Captain motioned to one of her subordinates, and a staff point stuck Ranma in the rear.

“Well now, keep that up and we’ll be friends soon enough! Some of the best people I know are people I beat the shit out of every once in a while.”

Glaring, the Captain said nothing more, and that was fine for Ranma. Clearly he could get under her skin well enough, and that would be important if she were half the important figure she made herself out to be. Ranma was being brought to negotiate with their leader, and for what? His freedom in exchange for the location of Saffron? That seemed like an easy trade…if these people were trustworthy. Being kidnapped after doing a good deed had without a doubt soured him on the Sorcerers, and despite Wuya’s plea for Ranma’s cooperation, the girl seemed just a hair on edge and resentful of Ranma. It went beyond Ranma’s snide remarks, too. Was it just because they didn’t usually have guests? Did they look down on people from the outside, or was it something more?

It _was_ something more, wasn’t it? There was a tenseness in the air. It wasn’t just Wuya’s gruff demeanor or her second’s shouting from earlier. The priests on the tower grounds spooked Ranma, too, for they weren’t at all the gentle healers he might’ve imagined. They tended to wounds without a word as far as he could see, and there were quite a few patients. Some of them could be explained by simple farming accidents—cuts and scrapes and such—but a black eye is a black eye, and Ranma saw more than a couple of those. Maybe it was just a little brawl and nothing more, but in Ranma’s heart, that didn’t sound too convincing.

After a few final rungs, the party stopped at the tower’s entrance, where the locks to the outer doors ground against each other and slid into the walls. “This is a great honor for an outsider,” said Wuya. “You should show the proper respect.”

“Oh yeah,” said Ranma. “I’ll try to curb my enthusiasm.”

Wuya glared, but she said nothing more to him. At her command, the doors parted, revealing the inner chambers. Torches cast flickering shadows on the court, and its members lined up in two files, kneeling for Wuya and her men. The outer doors closed, echoing through the tower—a low vibration, but with the wave of a hand, the monarch of the tribe silenced the overtones. She rose from a jade throne, taking a torch with her, so all could see her as she addressed the court.

“The Captain of the Guard has brought us this outsider,” she said. “For this matter of crucial import to the village, the Captain and I will see to her alone.”

The woman was tall and imposing, with long, reddish-brown hair to below her waist. She was older than her servants, but she was hardly gray or wrinkled. If anything, she looked only about as old as Ranma’s mother. She wore a pure white, hoodless robe with jade trimmings by her wrists and ankles—a far cry from the drab attire of her subjects—and she walked with a regal, dignified step. Her eyes fixated on Ranma, never wavering even as the tower echoed with banging doors and footsteps of her departed officers. Only Wuya, Ranma, and the Lady were left in the center of the court.

“So,” said Ranma, “this chick told me I’d be meeting you. She didn’t say anything about meeting her mom.”

“I assure you,” said the Lady, her lips curling with a smile, “I have never given birth to a child, nor have I had the pleasure of raising one myself. Alas, it is likely too late for me to try. I lie with no man; the village is my husband, and I work to satisfy it every day and night.”

“There are so many ways that statement could be taken wrongly,” said Ranma.

“Ah, a peculiarity of your language, yes? Forgive me if I’ve misspoken; it is rare that we have visitors, and even rarer to meet someone from your country. I have been remiss in not introducing myself. My name is Sindoor; I am leader of our people. And you?”

“Saotome Ranma.”

The Lady frowned. “And how do you write that? As ‘a maiden who rides a wild horse’?”

“That’s not exactly what it means,” said Ranma, glaring.

“Forgive me again. Is my Japanese appropriate?”

“Appropriate? Sheesh, yours is probably better than mine. Nobody’s really explained that bit to me yet.”

“We had another visitor once, a traveler it seemed. He wandered into the village, and in exchange for meals and shelter, he shared with us his language and culture. It was an enlightening experience for all of us. I advised most of the Guard and the palace servants to learn from him, and I think we are better for it.”

“Yeah, well, history lessons are good. And hey, it’s convenient for me, or else I wouldn’t understand a thing you say.”

“Yes,” said Sindoor. “If not for that, the Captain wouldn’t have understood what you said about Saffron, yes?”

Ranma shifted his weight, looking away. “No, I guess not.”

“You know him,” said Wuya. “How? Why?”

“Please,” said Sindoor. “Let us not rush matters. After all, it may be common for outsiders to know the legend of Saffron. They might tell it to their children to frighten them at night.”

Ranma scoffed. “You want to scare a kid these days? Tell them Santa’s going to give them coal for Christmas. A power hungry runt with a god complex doesn’t scare me.”

“So it isn’t common knowledge,” said Sindoor. “You are Japanese, you are foreign to this land, yet you know of Saffron.”

_Well, aren’t you clever._

“It is most strange, isn’t it? After all, we may isolate ourselves now, but we haven’t always. We’ve dealt with strangers before. Once there were men who represented a ‘Party.’ They threatened us; they threatened all the tribes of the basin if we resisted, but we did resist. We fought them. We pitted magic against their great machines and weaponry, and there was death, on both sides. After that, they left us alone. They said we could live in peace, as long as we made no effort to ‘publicize’ ourselves, to make our resistance known to the world at large.” She met Ranma’s gaze, cool and confident. “The Party wouldn’t let knowledge of our ways reach the outside, surely not a legend so dangerous as Saffron’s. So, I must ask you, Saotome Ranma, _how_ do you know it?”

“You’ve met him,” said Wuya. “You’ve fought him. You said we were weak, like him. You could only know that through battle. The caretaker of the springs said so himself—a battle was fought there.”

Ranma looked between them, thinking carefully on what to say next. “All right, so what if I did? No one’s told me what you want with the guy. I’m all for being helpful, but you’re the ones keeping me here, and you haven’t given me any reason to talk. So, you can either bust out the force lightning, Emperor, or you can explain to me what all this is about.”

“She is not titled _Emperor_ ,” said Wuya. “She is the Lady.”

“That’s not the point.”

Captain Wuya began to glare, but Lady Sindoor raised a hand to put her at ease. “I think Saotome Ranma’s request is reasonable, don’t you agree, Captain?”

“Perhaps,” said Wuya.

“I will do my best to persuade her, then,” said the Lady. “Please excuse us, Captain.”

“Being alone with the Outsider is unwise. She is stronger than she looks.”

“No bust, no brawn,” said Ranma, poking a finger at his chest. “You might want to work on that.”

“I’m sure I can defend myself,” the Lady assured Wuya.

Begrudgingly, the Captain acknowledged the Lady’s command with a bow and a nod, and though she watched Ranma carefully, she departed the court’s chambers without another word.

“I find it’s often simpler dealing personally with matters before me,” said Sindoor. “Intentions can’t be misunderstood that way. While any institution requires structure and organization, I strive to do as much as I can personally. It’s more efficient.”

“Yeah, well, so sorry, but I’m not really interested in how your grand royal court operates. That chick said we could deal and you’d let me go without any hassle. Is that true, or isn’t it?”

“Your condition is that you understand what we’ll do with the information you provide and why it is necessary, yes?”

“Something like that. It should be an easy question to answer, so I don’t see what the problem is.”

“Indeed, if I understand from the Captain correctly, you are owed at least that much.” Sindoor went to the back wall, behind the throne, and with a wave of her hand, a heavy stone door moved aside, revealing a room. “Please, follow me, Saotome Ranma. I will show you what you need to see.”

Reluctantly, Ranma entered the private room, a stone meditation chamber with three torches on each wall, giving the room a golden and orange glow. A pool of water, rectangular in shape, occupied most of the floor space, and water trickled in continuously from a hole square hole in the wall.

“I find the constancy of flowing water makes it easier to concentrate,” said the Lady. “It washes away all the smaller, individual sounds that might occupy our minds, and it is an apt metaphor for ki magic itself. You see, finding peace and tranquility is of paramount importance to people like us. Every day, we endeavor to maintain control over our abilities. It is imperative that we do not let the magic we wield influence us in return, but the nature of our discipline is that, sadly, we do not always succeed.”

Ranma shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The Lady touched a hand to Ranma’s shoulder. “See for yourself.”

  


BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

A drum pounded; its vibrations carried in the ground. To the call of war, the Sorcerers prepared themselves. They fashioned their staves from fallen logs and moved earth and rock with just their minds to build a defense. In broad daylight, the warriors of the village mustered by the waterfall and lake, raising their weapons to the sky.

“Some time ago, we went to war with one of the neighboring tribes. The losses we suffered forced us to close the village to the outside, so that we might rebuild and recover.” Sindoor grabbed Ranma’s shoulder blade, unwilling to let him wander, to break the vision. “The scars have faded with time, but I was there—I remember—so I know what the battle felt like to me. Though I’ve tried, I can’t forget.”

Ranma waved his hand through a sweaty leather helmet, but his fingers touched only air.

“During that war, we found ourselves pushed back to the valley, so we marched to battle to defend our village, to see it safe from those who’d destroy us. Overnight, we evacuated the lower quarter; we sent the mothers and children upriver, past the waterfall. We thought if we fell, we’d destroy the path up the cliff to give them time to escape, but that was a last contingency. We never truly considered we might fail. We believed our control over the elements would carry the day, that the river would be our best weapon against the enemy, and if all else failed, we had our prince, our captain, to lead us.”

Sindoor pointed out a tall figure, a man who towered a head above his comrades. Unlike the other Sorcerers, he wielded a unique weapon: a huge, frightening sword—as long as he was tall—that lay sheathed in its scabbard. As he walked, the length of the sword trailed behind.

“His name was Bailu, and it was quite appropriate, for he danced about his foes like the agile egret. He rallied us at the waterfall, for only his best warriors could defend the path against the enemy. He was our Prince, our Captain, and none of us wished to fail him. On his command, we would hold fast while we brought the wrath of the river and mountains from relative safety above.”

On the horizon, shadows of the coming army gathered. Scouts on horseback rode along the river and turned back, reporting to their forces. Their infantry led the charge, and mounted bowmen slung arrows overhead, a protective rain of death. Sindoor led Ranma up the path, to the top of the waterfall, where the bulk of the Sorcerer Guard meditated. They opened crevices in the ground, gaping chasms that swallowed horses and riders, trapping the enemy below. The river, a serpent in shape and form, reared back and swept the footmen away, and they tumbled like chess pieces on a broken board. Prince Bailu and his men mopped up the scattered remnants. A single swing of his sword shattered their armor, splintered their bows, and broke their bones without scratch or scrape on the skin.

“We thought ourselves invincible,” said Sindoor. “That’s why, even when the tide of battle turned, we thought surely we’d win.”

Water blasted the front line; the river barreled into the Sorcerers at the base of the waterfall. Downstream, their enemies pounded the water with staff and fist. They shaped the water in the forms of great sea beasts: the mako, the hammerhead, the great white.

“They turned the elements against us. With their vast numbers, it was all the distraction they needed to push the waterfall path, to engage us where a rock slide or windstorm would endanger both sides. The Prince was the best of us. He defended every man valiantly, but he wasn’t perfect. Even he could err.”

With a mighty swing, Prince Bailu plowed his greatsword into the ground! The shockwaves cut across the enemy flank, razing them to the earth, but this cone of death knew not friend from foe. Among the pink and red armors of the enemy, a handful of black tunics fell, silenced, lifeless.

“The Prince dropped his sword, and it lay across the bodies of our fallen. The rest of the Guard battled on—we shattered the path up the cliffside, so none would breach the upper village—but Prince Bailu stood still, stunned and paralyzed with the weight of what he’d done. The one thing a captain should never do is take the lives of his men, and the weight of that error took all the fight out of him. None of the enemy would touch him, and nothing, not the shouts of his lieutenants, not the death cries of his army, would rouse him. Nothing so much as moved the Prince’s soul until the enemy routed every last Sorcerer below. Everyone but him.

“They held him at knife-point. I don’t know what they said, but something must have stirred within him. Anger, perhaps, that he’d failed his men and led them to death? Sorrow, that he’d killed some of them by his own hand? Whatever it was, it was something powerful, something so terrible this valley has never seen shade of it since.”

A shockwave rippled across the lower valley; it kicked up dust and dirt and debris. The great army that had taken the river vanished, and in their place, piles of ash wafted along the riverbank. The trees, too, crumbled into soot. The valley descended into abject silence, for not even a single bird sang in the wake of destruction.

Ranma trembled. A cold sweat broke out on his brow. _The birds don’t sing because there aren’t any. They’re all gone._

Only water flowed from the river—just as water flowed into Sindoor’s meditation chambers. That was the sound Ranma heard. Sindoor let go of his shoulder, and the vision dissipated. The leveled lower valley faded, giving way to the unsteady light of the torches and cold stone walls. The Lady’s hand left Ranma’s shoulder, and the last of her warmth died away, leaving him to a still and lifeless room.

“The Prince’s spell was nothing I’d ever seen before,” said Sindoor. “I’m not sure if it’s right to say he discovered, created, or invented it. No single word fully captures what happened. The Prince saved us that day. He obliterated the enemy army, but he considered his discovery an unparalleled mistake. One man cannot wield pure destruction safely. It was ten years before anything would grow in the swath the Prince had leveled! The Prince did the only thing he could do to ensure that he would never bring about death on that scale again. He drowned himself in the sacred spring, taking the secrets of his ultimate spell with him.

“The war ended soon after that. Our enemies thought better of attacking again, but we were too weakened to go to their doorstep, either. The Prince’s mother quickly passed on, and the village came to my hands. I knew that though the Prince was gone, it was only a matter of time before another Sorcerer grew as powerful and dangerous as he. I searched through the scrolls of our great library, hoping in vain for some solution, some means to keep our magic in check. I happened on an ancient idea, long forgotten, that would protect my people from their darkest urges—urges that, with our powers, could lead to catastrophe. This means is called the _Sieve of Ki_.

“The Sieve filters the toxic energies that might otherwise poison our arts. It keeps us safe and sane, but only while it functions. The Sieve has failed us, Saotome Ranma. It has been sated, and the protection it affords has been taken from us. Every moment that passes, any one of my people could herald our end. A man is responsible for the Sieve’s failure, and we are seeking him. Whoever that person is, he caused a great disturbance in the ripples, the eddies of ki that flow through this place. That is why we seek a being of power, such as Saffron. Only such a magnificent creature could be responsible for this deed. We must ensure that his power can never cause the Sieve to falter again.”

“And you’re so sure it’s him?” asked Ranma.

“It would take a being of great power to sate the Sieve from outside the village. So you’ll forgive me if, when mention of Saffron comes to me, I assume the culprit is him? I know the legends well, Saotome Ranma. The Captain found you at the spring ground, whose waters Saffron can use for his transformation.”

“Fine, assume it if you want. What are you going to do, then? You’ll go after him?”

“Yes, yes we will. It’s sad that this may put us in conflict with the Phoenix, but for what I see, we have no other choice. You can help us, Saotome Ranma. You can tell us about the outside that we know so little about, that we have shielded ourselves from for so long. If you know even a little about Saffron or his people, it may save lives.”

 _You mean it’ll save Sorcerer lives by taking Phoenix lives instead._ Ranma sighed, getting a headache. Were he in their position, would he do things differently? No, he wouldn’t, for he _had_ faced that trial, and he hadn’t regretted the choice he’d made.

So Ranma did feel he could understand these Sorcerers. In fact, he may have understood Prince Bailu better than even Sindoor had. Sindoor might’ve failed to fathom how Bailu—outnumbered and outmatched—found the pinnacle of his power and slew everyone who’d killed his men, but Ranma knew that feeling. He knew it in every fiber of his muscles, every bundle of his nerves. He knew it when he held a hot, charred doll in his hands, when her eyelids drooped dangerously low. Ranma had clung to hope where Bailu despaired, but that didn’t make them different. Either way, men seek and destroy everything that opposes them and make their enemies feel it, make them regret it, for days to come.

And Ranma had surely made Saffron regret it. Saffron would be regretting it for the next decade, at least until he grew up again. Yet even as a child, that arrogant bird-brain was causing problems for Ranma.

“I see you are troubled,” said Sindoor. “I assure you what we wish to know is simple. It’s been many years since our village was exposed to the outside world. You seem to be familiar with Saffron and his people. We only wish to be prepared. I assure you, we have no quarrel with you, Saotome Ranma. Once we have no more need of your aid, you will be free to go with my apologies. It is distasteful that we’ve had to resort to such measures, but this is an exceptional set of circumstances. I assure you, it is not our way to seek outsiders. We only wish to keep to ourselves if at all possible. I regret that we could not keep to that maxim here.”

“Bet you don’t regret it enough to let me go right now. And what about the Guide? You guys did a real number on him. I’m surprised you haven’t started zapping me already, honestly.”

“It seems only fair to repay an act of mercy with respect,” said Sindoor. “yet if violence is what you’d prefer, we will meet your expectations in kind. I will take no pleasure in it, but I will do what I must for my people. Still, it is my hope we can work together amicably and leave each other to her own business when we are through. Ultimately, the choice is yours.”

  


Some choice it was. Cooperate or risk torture at best? Ranma scoffed at the very implication that there was a choice there. He didn’t mind cooperating. There was just a question of how much cooperation he would provide. 

If the Sorcerers wanted to fight a war against the Phoenix, fine. That wasn’t his concern. People would die, yes, but people were dying all the time, fighting wars with or without Ranma’s involvement. He had his own safety to worry about. There were lots of things worthy of enduring torture and death for, but Saffron’s people weren’t among them.

So Ranma decided to tell them what they were interested in hearing. The Lady and her Captain held a private audience with Ranma in the court, and Ranma decided to keep his story simple.

“Saffron was looking to transform, yeah,” he explained it to Sindoor and Wuya. “I’d been to Jusenkyō a couple times. That’s how I ended up looking like this—way more gorgeous than any guy ever should look. So the Guide and his daughter came to me for help, trying to make sure Saffron wouldn’t destroy the springs completely doing his transformation thing. We fought, and as it happened, we ended up breaking Saffron out of his egg early. So he didn’t get all the way finished. Guess he was like a barbecue with gasoline poured on—flaming and explosive and out of control. Anyway, what he wanted and what I wanted were at odds, so we had a fight. I—” Ranma frowned, catching himself. “Let’s just say I sent him and his minions packing for Mount Phoenix.”

Perched on her throne, Sindoor nodded in appreciation. “It must’ve been quite difficult. Saffron is a legendary being for the peoples of the Plateau. Perhaps his immaturity made an impossible task merely improbable instead. Still, I must imagine that defeating him was a difficult task.”

“Wasn’t too hard,” said Ranma with a shrug.

Captain Wuya stared Ranma down. “Saffron gave up his maturity after a battle with you, Outsider? How can that be? You must’ve wounded him gravely for him to give up on completing his transformation.”

“I guess I did.”

The Lady leaned closer to Ranma, her eyes piercing and razor-sharp in focus. “How gravely?” she asked.

Ranma raised an eyebrow. Sure, he’d glossed over what exactly had transpired between him and Saffron, but surely to them there was no difference.

Except there was. Both Wuya and Sindoor watched him intensely, making Ranma feel ill at ease. This was too important to them. Maybe he was the one feeling ripples of magic in the air, but Sindoor and Wuya’s interested gazes added to the unsettling mystique of the village. The youth of the villagers, the lone tower amidst ramshackle huts—none of it made sense. They were hiding something from him, something big and important, something they didn’t want him to find out or see. But what could it be?

Ranma had no answer to that question. All he knew was that, if these people wouldn’t be straight with him, he wasn’t about to bare his soul for their sake. What he’d done to Saffron didn’t need to be said in so many words.

“Well?” asked Sindoor. “How gravely did you wound him?”

“Grave enough he won’t be too much of a problem if you want to go fight him, at least for a while,” said Ranma. “I got him through the chest with a tornado, basically.”

The Captain turned aside, mumbling to the Lady in Chinese. Though Sindoor responded calmly, Wuya’s words grew louder and more animated with each passing second.

“Enough,” said Sindoor, placid and cool. “We shouldn’t bore Saotome Ranma with our discussions. We’ll have to consider this tale carefully. Of course, I expect there’s quite a bit more we can learn about the Phoenix and Saffron from you, our Japanese friend.”

She was a bit naÏve and deluded if she considered Ranma a friend to them. And of course there was more he could tell them—he wasn’t about to say everything he knew right away. Then they might not have any more use for him, and he’d find out first-hand whether they intended to let him go, as Wuya had promised, or if their intentions toward him were more sinister.

Ranma didn’t want to find out too soon. Would these people kill him when they had Saffron in their clutches? Would they find him no longer useful—or no longer a threat—if they knew Saffron had been reduced to a small child with a horrendous haircut? All possible. As much as Sindoor herself had tried to persuade Ranma, showing him why they’d abducted him and what they ultimately wanted, the facts remained: they’d taken him, and they would’ve taken the Guide. Maybe good, yet desperate people would do that. But a lot of bad people would do that too.

In the end, the Sorcerers’ problems weren’t Ranma’s own, and he deemed it better not to leave his safety to the chance that they were honorable and just.

So while the Sorcerers prepared themselves to face Phoenix people in battle, Ranma spent the time to himself thinking on a way to escape. The existence of the Maze meant he couldn’t just waltz out of there—that was why Sindoor felt safe letting him wander around, no doubt. Despite scouting up and down the river, past the tower and into the woods south of the waterfall, Ranma found no obvious gaps in the Maze—nothing he was willing to risk himself over, anyway.

With forest on all sides, the best Ranma could think of was to swim downriver in freezing water and hope the confusing magic of the Maze wouldn’t get him turned around or drown him. It was a risky idea. Surely he wasn’t _that_ desperate. No, Ranma resolved he had never tried such a moronic idea, that he had absolutely not become disoriented while trying to swim his way to freedom in the river, and he most certainly did not do his best rendition of Akane swimming for her life while trying to figure out which way was up.

After losing a day trying to dry off and not get hypothermia from that debacle, Ranma was more circumspect about his chances. Wandering about all by his lonesome was doing him little good. He needed a different approach.

At first, he thought the secret to escaping might be in the Sorcerers’ magic. After all, the Captain had said that only Sorcerers could freely walk through the Maze. If Ranma learned their magic, maybe that would do the trick. Ranma didn’t expect any of them to teach him the ways of magic, but he knew a thing or two about manipulating ki already. He figured he could pick something up on his own if he watched the right things and studied the pertinent techniques.

He started with the Guard, watching their sparring exercises on the tower grounds from afar, but he found their approach to wielding magic horrendously flawed. They relied on magic exclusively, using it for every attack and maneuver, and because they practiced against each other, they would never improve. If these people really meant to go after the Phoenix, they’d be in for a rude awakening—marching on Saffron’s people would prove a bloodier, more desperate affair than Sindoor realized.

But Ranma would be long gone by then if he had anything to say about it. Whatever happened after that he couldn’t be blamed for, could he?

Regardless, Ranma found the Guard’s training unhelpful, so he stopped by a small market near the top of the waterfall instead. It was a place for craftsmen and artisans to do their work—work they did with magic more than their hands. A smith tempered swords through inner heat and fire. Baskets assembled themselves with but a passing glance from their weavers, and a rope-maker seared the ends of a braided cord with a spark from her fingertips. That could be useful. Being able to start a fire from nothing but one’s internal energies? It would definitely be preferable to rubbing sticks together and hoping for a flame. Still, it couldn’t be efficient, could it? Why, for example, would a man shape a pot of clay with his mind instead of just using his own two hands?

“It’s the way we work,” said a potter, one of the few villagers who would speak to Ranma. “I feel the material and shape it exactly with magic. If I used my hands, one slip would render all my work moot. As I grow older, arthritis might make it impossible for me to use my hands, but I will still have magic. You people are the ones who have it backwards.”

“What if you lose concentration?” asked Ranma. “Then you could screw up just as easily as if your hands did something wrong.”

The potter laughed. “And if you use your hands to do the job, you can lose concentration just as easily.”

Ranma huffed. He could argue about that for days if he wanted to, but it was all beside the point. Having a villager engage him was useful. Maybe he didn’t have to use magic or find a gap in the Maze. This man might be able to tell him everything he needed.

“So it’s the same for everyone, isn’t it,” said Ranma. “If we slip up, we lose control of what we’re doing, and we end up doing something—” He cut himself off. “Well, we end up with a misshapen pot, huh? Bet the channelers can’t afford to slip up, either.”

“No, no, but they have each other to keep focused.”

“How do you mean?”

“They hum in harmony,” said the potter. “The tones keep them focused. It’s a time-honored technique for difficult work.”

“Clever. I bet it’s hard, though. Anywhere you go, there are lots of other sounds. Must be distracting.”

“Not at all. They have all the space they could want to themselves.”

“Oh? Where’s that?”

The potter laughed to himself, shaking his head at Ranma. Well, it was worth a try. If Ranma couldn’t find a way through the Maze on his own, breaking the channelers’ concentration seemed like a good idea. Maybe if he went around the village, listening for that humming, he could find them himself.

“So, Outsider, you aren’t the next Sieve?”

Ranma blinked, snapped out of his wandering thoughts, and looked back at the potter and his tent. “Excuse me?”

“If you were Sieve, you would be locked away in the top of the tower by now,” said the potter. “No, you can’t be Sieve. I don’t sense strong power in you.”

“What do you mean? You don’t think I’m powerful?”

The potter eyed a chunk of clay. The piece separated from the bulk and flew, splatting in Ranma’s face.

“If you couldn’t stop that, no, I don’t think so.”

Ranma wiped his face with his sleeve. “Cute. But I don’t think you understand. How could I be your Sieve? The Sieve is a thing, isn’t it?”

“Is that what you believe? You think a machine could take away all our instabilities? No, that’s what the Sieve does. He lives with them, so we don’t have to.”

Ranma’s stomach churned. “So what does that have to do with me? Why would you think I should be the next Sieve?”

“That’s the way of things. When one Sieve is sated, the person responsible takes his place. His power gives him a higher capacity—no, wrong word. Let me see…a higher tolerance for it?”

_If that person is still a powerful being. If he was killed instead and is wearing diapers…_

“Outsider?”

Ranma stormed from the bazaar, heading back to the cliff and down the path by the waterfall. Sindoor and Wuya—they’d lied to him. They deliberately let him think the Sieve was a thing that Saffron had broken with his power, but that wasn’t it at all. They didn’t just want Saffron to make sure he would never break the Sieve again. They wanted him to _be_ the Sieve, to become the Sieve’s successor. That’s why they were so concerned about how badly Ranma had wounded Saffron. If he were too injured, he might not be able to serve their needs.

 _I should’ve known. It didn’t make sense. The Captain said Saffron could_ help _them, but ever since I got here they’ve been trying to sell it like they wanted to take him prisoner, for their own protection. I knew they were lying to me, but I didn’t see what was right in front of my face!_

Of course, Ranma had deceived them, too, keeping the extent of Saffron’s injuries to himself for his own reasons. Perhaps that meant there could be no trust between him and the Sorcerers, but all along, Ranma had a choice. He could tell these people who’d taken him that Saffron had died and couldn’t threaten or help them, saving them all a lot of effort and bloodshed. Or, he could let things play out and try to find freedom on his own. It all depended on how willing he was to leave his fate in the hands of these Sorcerers. Right then, the prospects weren’t looking so good.

But the best test of a man’s character is when you catch him in a lie. Does he keep lying to you, or will be admit the truth and defend his actions? That’s why Ranma went back to the tower, looking for the leaders of this village to say what they would. From their deeds, he would judge them and choose his path.

Ranma found the Court of Sindoor absent its Lady. Instead, the Captain was in control. A pair of guards crossed their staves before Ranma, forbidding him entry, but the Captain waved him through.

“Let her pass,” said Wuya. “What do you want, Outsider? Have you more information to offer to the Lady?”

“Not until I understand what I’ve been hearing,” said Ranma. “Is what I’m told right? The Sieve is a fucking person?”

Wuya winced, and with a nod to court officers, she had the room cleared. Her momentary worry faded, and she met Ranma’s gaze with sternness and confidence. “It was only a matter of time before you found out. Yes, the Sieve is a person. He lives at the top of the tower, isolated from the rest of the village, and he has carried a tremendous burden. The Sieve has mediated the most extreme expressions of our powers, until Saffron sated him.”

“And you have a person doing this? Whether they want to or not—is that right?”

“It’s an immense sacrifice, but we only demand it because we cannot be safe any other way.”

Easy for Wuya to say; she wasn’t the one making sacrifices.

“I want to see him,” said Ranma.

“What?”

“Take me to the Sieve. I want to see what it is you’d do with Saffron once you take him. If I’m going to be helping you, I deserve to know.”

“It is forbidden!”

“Blah, blah, ‘it’s forbidden.’ Do you want my willing cooperation or not?”

Wuya glared, but she glanced upward, to the ceiling, with an intense gaze. “There are too many people around to take you to him now. Go to the top of the cliff and stay there until dusk. I will meet you there.”

  


By dusk, many of the palace attendants came up the trail along the cliff to return to their homes. But for the tower, there were few buildings or even huts in the part of the valley below the waterfall—there was a pond at the base of the waterfall and pool or spring by the tree line, but that was all. Though Ranma spotted many attendants to Sindoor’s court on their way upriver, he saw no one from the Sorcerer Guard. They’d stopped sparring on the tower grounds about an hour before sunset, so where could they have gone? Did they live in the tower?

It was no more than a minor point of curiosity, but Ranma had little else to do to pass the time—beyond looking for Wuya, anyway. Even if Saffron could serve as the Sieve, Ranma wasn’t concerned about what the Sorcerers would do to him. He wanted to meet the Sieve because the Sieve was a Sorcerer himself. A man making a sacrifice for the good of the village? That much Ranma could understand, but Ranma had a strong feeling that whoever broke the Sieve would be chosen to be the next, whether he wanted to or not. If they were willing to do that to one of their own people, why would they bother showing an outsider like Ranma any respect?

“Outsider.” From the path down the waterfall came the Captain, her staff strapped to her back.

“About time,” said Ranma. “What’s the plan?”

“Climb onto my back.”

“…are you kidding?”

“We will fly to the top of the tower, where the Sieve lives. You can’t fly, so I will carry you.”

“Fat chance! The only time I’ve piggybacked on top of a girl was when a doctor purposefully hit my pressure point so I couldn’t walk.”

“Why would a doctor do that to you?”

Ranma shrugged. “Oh, you know, guy thought it was his job to help me play nice with others.”

The Captain stared.

“All right, fine, let’s get on with it. You might want to take off that staff. I don’t want to get stuck with it in a bad place.”

Taking her staff in one hand, the Captain turned toward the tower, and Ranma climbed atop her back, wrapping his elbow around her neck for support.

“Outsider,” she said, straining, “you’re choking me.”

“Oh, am I? Can’t imagine why you’d think I’d do that. It’s not like you’ve ever double-crossed _me_ before, is it? Is it?” Ranma released her, wrapping his arms around her chest instead. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty flat, or else this might be a bit awkward.”

With an irritated breath, the Captain stepped up to the cliff and rose gently off the ground. They floated over the waterfall, their path steady and controlled. The easy speed of their travel gave Ranma a funny feeling.

_Man, if we had a bicycle and put me in a basket, this would be something out of a movie with a friendly alien._

In the twilight, Ranma and the Captain floated to the top of the tower, weathering a westerly breeze. The apex of Sindoor’s palace had a flat top, and Ranma and the Captain came down right in the center of the circular roof of dusty, gray stone.

“There’s a window here,” said Wuya, leading him to the eastern face. “You should be able to reach it. Be quiet; there may be priests with the Sieve. You’ll be in a room above him, able to watch. Don’t make a sound. I’ll come up the stairs.”

Ranma nodded, and the Captain left him there as she jumped off the top of the tower to float to the ground.

For his part, Ranma peered over the edge, finding the small square window on the wall at a height that even he found a little dizzying. He turned his back to the edge and climbed down, swinging through the window feet-first. He found himself in a pitch-dark room, with only the light of a small flame flickering on the walls, coming in through a pair of windows in a dividing wall.

It was, as the Captain had said, an observation room, sitting several feet higher than the room it overlooked. Two square windows gave Ranma a view into the Sieve’s chambers, in which three hooded men sat by a recessed, sunken fire. They faced away from Ranma. A fourth figure completed the circle, his face obscured. Soft, hushed voices whispered in rhythm, a meditation chant. Smoke from the fire diffused through the windows, carrying a strange, chemical smell. It was bitter, like burning leaves, yet sweet, too.

Until he heard a sickening scream.

The boy on the far side of the fire seized, crying out through clenched teeth. As far as Ranma could tell, the hooded figures weren’t doing anything to him—they only held onto his arms—but that was the unsettling part about it. Being burned or zapped with lightning he could understand. Some sort of mental torture that no one else could see? It made Ranma’s hairs stand on end, and he stepped back from the window, looking away.

After a few minutes of screams and silence alternating, a knock could be heard on the iron door to the Sieve’s chambers. One of the hooded men went to the door, and he motioned to the two others to follow him. They put the fire out, and the boy in the dark room slumped over, falling back on the floor. His breathing was labored and choppy, but he didn’t shed a single tear.

_Man, what have they done to this kid?_

A heavy door opened into the observation room, and the Captain slipped inside, clinging to the inner wall. Only a faint white glow from the tip of her staff cut away at the darkness. “The priests shouldn’t disturb you,” she whispered. “I’ve sent them away for the night.”

“What were they doing?” asked Ranma.

“Trying to help him remember how to be Sieve again. Intense feelings can distract him. They must wash over him and become nothing.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call what they were doing _help_.”

Wuya nodded regretfully. “It is difficult work. Believe me when I say it—no one sacrifices more for the village’s safety than the Sieve. Those of us who feel the ripples of ki magic strongly can’t help but be moved by them, at least a little. The Sieve is the antithesis of that. The Sieve feels the waves of ki from others and is unmoved by them. He bonds with all of us, and whenever we drift from serenity, he bears the burden instead. When he became Sieve, he was young, too young. I’ve watched him grow up in this room—isolated and alone—for the better part of his life. Until a new Sieve can be found, the priests will try to patch him, but their efforts will not hold forever. The sooner Saffron is ours, the sooner that boy won’t have to shoulder the burden of all our sins anymore.”

Ranma faced the window, watching the boy in the room below struggle like a wounded animal. Glancing at the Captain from the corner of his eye, Ranma said, “You don’t like that he has to do this, do you?”

“No,” said the Captain, staying put in her corner. “I think he’s been punished enough.”

“Punished for what? Breaking the last Sieve?”

The Captain looked away. “Perhaps you should ask him yourself.”

“You want me to talk with him?”

“Yes. He can convince you, more than any of us, why no Sorcerer should be made to take on this burden. Go to that door. There’s a window on the far wall; it’s covered with a metal flap, but you can open it to get some light into the room.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

Opening the door to the hallway outside, the Captain glanced over her shoulder, muttering. “That is my punishment.” She met Ranma’s gaze, and a little louder, she said, “Show him comfort. For years, he’s suffered for all of us. Help us find the new Sieve, so the priests won’t need to come back and he can move on. If you can, my promise will stand.”

Ranma scoffed. “Fine, fine, but does your mom know how soft you are on this kid?”

The Captain narrowed her eyes, and she shut the door to the observation room behind her.

 _Bitch has a gooey heart after all. How cute._ He rolled his eyes and pushed on the door to the Sieve’s chambers, descending the stair in pitch darkness. He felt along the wall for the window, and sure enough, there was a cubby hole for a covered window. He pushed out, and the latch gave way, allowing the twilight to come in.

And it was then that the boy whose labored breaths echoed through the room stirred. He spoke out in unintelligible Chinese. He slid along the floor, babbling and crying out incoherently.

“Easy, easy,” said Ranma. “I’m not one of those priests or whatever. I’m just a typical Japanese guy. In a girl’s body. And you might not even understand a word I’m saying, which would make this pretty pointless, huh?”

The boy stopped scurrying. He crawled along the floor, into the light, and for the first time, Ranma saw his face. He was skinny and pale, and his eyes were sunken. His hair was blond and unkempt. He wore little more than rags, and his knees were knobby and swollen.

 _Geez, this isn’t right. What have they done to this kid?_ Ranma shook his head and met the boy’s gaze. “I guess you do understand me,” said Ranma. “What’s your name?”

The boy shrank back a little, so only his eyes could be seen from the shadows. “Ti—Tilaka.”

“Pleased to meet you…or something. Anyway, you must be wondering what a Japanese guy is doing way out here, but—”

“I know,” Tilaka cut in. “I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“When you were brought to the village, I felt your presence.”

“How’s that?”

“The ripples of ki are strong from you, stronger than from any other outsider I’ve met. They were travelers or traders. You’re different. You know how to fight.”

“I guess you could say that, yeah,” said Ranma. “Funny, though. Someone was just telling me they didn’t think I was that strong.”

“They don’t recognize the way you use your ki.” Tilaka laughed to himself. “I always liked how similar the words were, in our language and yours. It doesn’t surprise me; the Guard trains day and night against each other. They don’t know how the world feels outside.”

“But you do because you were the Sieve.”

“Not ‘were.’ I am the Sieve.” Tilaka shifted position, sitting by the line between the twilight from the window and the shadows. “The Sieve listens to the people. She feels the ripples of ki that come from every living thing in the village. She moderates them. She damps them, so they cannot sway people. That’s why she’s needed.”

“Well, the way I hear it, you’re not supposed to do it anymore, right?”

“I would if I could.”

“Why the hell would you want to do something like this?”

“Because I have sinned.”

“What could you have possibly done to deserve this?”

Tilaka pursed his lips in reflection before speaking again. “It was eight years ago—my twelfth summer. The Lady picked us. She said she knew our potential, that we would one day lead the tribe as officers of the Guard. She trained us herself. She took us to the top of the waterfall and unearthed the rocks and trees from the ground. She showed us how to feel the world around us, to grasp it with our minds. She cultivated our powers. She made us the defenders of the people, and we were proud to do it.

“But she warned us, too. She cautioned us not to bond too tightly to our comrades. She said trust was necessary among us, but we should avoid building relations that would only be painful if severed, if lost in battle. Young as we were, we wanted to obey the Lady, but we didn’t know any better, either. Some people, like Xiu, who keeps me here, I never got along with, but…”

“You met someone?”

Tilaka smiled. “I never knew her true name. We take names to go by in battle. In your language, you’d call her the Crow.”

“And you weren’t supposed to make friends.”

“No, but I couldn’t help myself. She defended me from Xiu when he stole my supper. She sparred with me when I fell behind in workout. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have passed the trials to be a Guardsman. She helped me; she didn’t have to.” He took to his feet, bracing himself on the stone wall. “I wanted to thank her. I started telling her things about my other life, even though it was forbidden. How I milled grain for my two little sisters, how I worried that, without me, they might starve in the winter. I told her my true name, Tilaka.” He blushed. “I showed her my body—the body I was born with.”

Ranma gawked. “Um, come again?”

“We showed each other our bodies. We showed each other everything.”

“But you were twelve!”

Tilaka cocked his head, puzzled.

“You know what? Never mind. Just move on from the showing bodies thing, okay?”

“But I tempted her.”

“Oh no, just stop!”

“That was my offense.”

Ranma blinked. “Your ‘offense’?”

“That’s what woke the Sieve,” said Tilaka. “What Crow and I shared that night, by the sacred spring. What we did was forbidden, but I didn’t care. I tempted her, and the depth of that transgression roused the Sieve from slumber. I was the one at fault. That’s why I had to take over. They couldn’t patch the last Sieve.”

“So you took his place.”

“It could’ve been Crow instead, but I willingly took up the burden. Still, the humiliation, the shame of it—Crow killed herself over it. I murdered her, my friend, for what I couldn’t bear not to have. That is my sin, and that’s why I bear this duty, day after day. I won’t complain when the priests come to patch my memory. It’s my fault. My perversion woke the Sieve before me.”

“And that’s why you want to keep doing this, but you can’t,” said Ranma.

“No. A few weeks ago, I felt something miraculous and incredible.” Tilaka climbed to his feet. “Come with me, Outsider. Come by the window.”

Ranma followed diligently, peering over Tilaka’s shoulder. The Sieve opened the metal flap to a view of the forested mountain in the sunset.

“Usually, I only awaken and tend to my own needs at night, when everyone but a few channelers is asleep. That time, though, it was daylight. From a mountain to the east, I felt something. I felt fire.”

Squinting, Ranma looked on the horizon. Was he saying Jusenkyō was out there?

“It was truly a magnificent feeling! I wanted to embrace it, but by the time I’d come to the window to try to focus on it, it was gone. The fires had gone out, and all that energy swept away from me, like floodwaters receding into an overflowing river. I tried to sleep again, to meditate, to quiet the energies I felt there, but one last wave came to me, something profound, intense. I couldn’t suppress it! I couldn’t make it die and ebb away! It was…” Tilaka shuddered. Bracing himself on the windowsill, he wiped a tear from his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the words. Not even in our language; I don’t have the words.”

What could that have been? Saffron’s rebirth? The fires went out, and then they came back in one last outburst, right?

No, that couldn’t be. Tilaka was crying, yes, but it was in happiness, awe, and wonder.

“It was a good feeling?” asked Ranma.

Tilaka nodded.

“But I thought you were just supposed to keep people from going crazy with power,” said Ranma. “What do good feelings have to do with that?”

“Any strong feeling can lead to powerful magic. Let me show you.” Tilaka left the curtain, letting the soft daylight from the valley shine in. “Being Sieve means you deaden the ripples that move us,” he said, sitting by the fire once more. “But that’s not your only power. You can add to them, make them bigger. It’s not something I usually do. Anyone else, anyone in the tribe, would understand why.”

_Well, I’m not part of your tribe, so I don’t understand._

But strangely, instead of confusion and bewilderment taking hold of him, warmth and bliss crept over Ranma’s beating heart. His mind drifted to memories of simpler moments, to times not of mere complacency but of joy and happiness. When, before his battle with Kumon Ryu, Akane took him by the hand and urged him to fight his best. When he leapt from the maw of the eight-headed serpent, she promised they’d go home together. Though he couldn’t confess to her on the way back, he had to admit those feelings, at least to himself, that he liked when she was around, that he enjoyed having her near.

“It’s interesting when we have a visitor,” said Tilaka. “They know these energies so much better than we do. It’s a unique challenge, but I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it at all.”

Regret. On the path home from Ryūgenzawa, he regretted not telling her how he felt, but it was inevitable. Making her cry was inevitable. Playing with her heart over what, some stupid battle suit? He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that her soul was fragile; it was that he understood, without realizing, exactly what would pierce it, what would shatter it like window glass. Gods only knew how many times he insulted her body—her bust, her figure—when he should cherish it instead. The warmth of her next to him was a fruit he hardly deserved. It’d be so easy if she said she liked someone else. Then he wouldn’t need to tease her. He could let go, but as it was, he held on. Even when she refused him, sent him away to this place, he held on…

_Why?_

He rubbed his sleeve over his eyes; this was no time for such sadness, no place to mourn his mistakes! _Geez,_ he thought, _I’m almost crying, and for what? Why do I feel this way?_

“Do you understand now?” Tilaka shook, tears streaming down his face. “Or do you need more?”

Ranma’s skin tingled. His hairs stood on end. “You’re doing this,” he said. “How? Why?”

“Sometimes, I just want to know these energies better,” said Tilaka. “What I felt that day, it touched me. It woke me when I’ve been Sieve for so long. Maybe that’s why I can’t be Sieve anymore—not because I can’t be, but because I don’t _want_ to be. I gave in to temptation, then and now.” He met Ranma’s gaze. “I feel what you feel, and I want more.”

Anger and hatred pumped through his veins. Ranma balled his fists. He stomped about the fire. This kid was violating him; there was no other way about it, yet Ranma felt rage only toward himself. Disgust for his cruelties to Akane. Loathing for not being the man she wanted him to be. He let her down. He almost let her die to Saffron. It was only luck that she survived; he had nothing to do with saving her! Nothing!

He yanked Tilaka to his feet. “Stop it, damn you! I didn’t ask for this!”

The boy thrashed in his grip, delirious. Like an addict on a rush, his face contorted with pleasure and pain.

“Dammit, is this what it’s all about? You want to make me _angry_?”

The boy’s eyes focused, a wicked grin on his face.

“Well, kid,” said Ranma, shaking, “you got it.”

BAM! Ranma clocked Tilaka, decking him to the floor. The boy collapsed, falling like a puppet with its strings cut, and Ranma, for his part, stood still, panting. Adrenaline and mixed emotions gave way to cold sweat and a level head.

“Oh man.” He rolled Tilaka over, pressing his his fingers to the boy’s neck. “What have I done?”

The door to the Sieve’s chambers slammed on its hinges, and the Captain stood in the doorway, staring at the scene before her in horror. “What have you done, Outsider? I asked you to show him compassion, and this is what you do?”

Ranma backed away from Tilaka, getting out of the way so the light from the window would fall on his face again. That boy had stirred something inside him. He touched Ranma’s mind—his heart—and brought out things Ranma would’ve preferred to leave buried and forget. That was the Sieve’s power.

The power he’d used every day, to keep atrocities from happening whenever a Sorcerer grew heated and uncontrollable. It wasn’t a spike in magic that he was meant to smooth out. Why had Prince Bailu turned a whole army to ash? It was out of anger and despair and regret. That was what the Sieve would bring out and contain in himself. Ranma knew this, for he’d felt Tilaka’s touch on his heart.

_That’s what they’re trying to do. This isn’t about their powers at all! They took this kid and made him Sieve, and why? Because he had an adolescent crush on a girl? They’d give up everything for their precious magic. They’d make themselves into soulless, unfeeling monsters._

Ranma slid to the floor of the Sieve’s chambers, stunned and horrified, while the Captain tended to Tilaka, checking that he was still alive.

_I’ve got to get out of here; someone has to know what these people are doing. They’re practically mutilating themselves, and they expect me to help them do it?_

He balled his hand into a fist.

_No way. No way in hell. I’ll tear this tower apart with my bare hands before it comes to that._

  


A pair of guards from outside the room came in to tend to Tilaka while the Captain held Ranma in the adjacent hallway, her grip on his arm steely like a metal clamp. After a fashion, one of the guards went downstairs, fetching the Captain’s second, Xiu, who bore a displeased snarl upon being summoned to this mess.

“There must be more guards!” he shouted, thick eyebrows quavering with every word he spat out. “In this time most of all, the protection of the Sieve must be impenetrable! Get me some priests to tend to the Sieve! And you two!” He pointed out the men who’d stood watch before. “The Captain is _never_ to see the Sieve! Understand? Never! That is _not_ once every thousand days! Never!”

“But sir,” said one of the men, “the Captain did not go into the room with him. She only observed—”

“I’m not interested in your excuses!”

“You tell ‘em, Xiu,” said Ranma. “Choke their asses with your magic voodoo powers. It really worked wonders for a guy I know. He wears a black helmet.”

Xiu glared. He marched up to Ranma and pointed the tip of his staff under Ranma’s chin. “You are an outsider; I expect nothing from you.” He turned the staff to point to the Captain instead. “You, however—you knew it was your responsibility not to contact the Sieve, yet you did so anyway! You have failed in your duty, Captain, and I will make sure the Lady hears of it!”

Batting Xiu’s staff away, the Captain stared him down. “It is not your place to lecture me. Do your duty, and I will do mine. If you have nothing else to report to me, I will see the outsider back to her hut.”

“To assault the Sieve is blasphemy, yet you treat it like a slight or inconvenience. I can think of no greater show of weakness than that!”

“I will deal with the Outsider as I see fit,” said the Captain, “and I don’t need _my_ second to tell me that. The Lady has appointed me to this post.”

Xiu scoffed. “And the Lady would never cater to her favorite or make an error in judgment, would she.”

“You question the Lady?”

Stiffening, Xiu must’ve sensed the dangerous territory he was treading into. “I have nothing more to report, _Captain_ ,” he said with a sneer.

Nodding, Captain Wuya took Ranma by the arm and escorted him to the central staircase of the tower for a long journey down. It was a spiral stair with a large, circular beam in the middle, preventing anyone or anything from falling down an unimaginable height. The various levels of the tower featured a series of identical rooms, all with doorways but no doors, and members of the Sorcerer Guard to stand watch at each floor. Ranma saw no one on those middle levels—his view being too obstructed to see more than a little of each—but he heard much. Water trickled over stone, and faint, resonating tones reverberated through the staircase. It wasn’t music—it had no sense of rhythm or time. It was just a steady collection of harmonious tones, like a chord sustained on an organ.

Ranma didn’t understand what he was hearing, but he welcomed the chance for a moment of tranquility. Meeting the Sieve had left something empty inside him—or maybe, it was where he’d walled off all the things he didn’t want to think about. They were memories and feelings no one else had a right to bring up and rummage through. Tilaka was like a burglar, going through the desk drawers and filing cabinets of his mind for juicy documents or scandalous photos, and no matter how he tried to protect himself, Ranma didn’t have a key to shut the boy out. Being a martial artist, he did what came naturally to protect himself, even if the threat to him wasn’t to his body.

_Knowing how messed up that kid is, it had to be only a matter of time before he did something worse. Slap me with a doctorate and call me Algernon. That’s what that Sieve of theirs could do to me. No thanks._

At his side, the Captain said nothing, but her grip on Ranma’s arm was strong—strong enough to leave a bruise, Ranma figured, so he tried to lighten the mood.

“You know, I’ve had girls try to keep a tight hold on me before. Usually I try to get away as fast as I can, but I guess for you I’ll have to make an exception.”

WHAM! Ranma’s head banged against the stone wall of the stairwell, and the Captain pressed her staff across his neck, pressuring his throat.

“You know, you really need to work on your sense of humor,” said Ranma. “You don’t know how to take a joke.”

“You think this is an occasion to laugh about?” cried Wuya. “I asked you to be gentle with Tilaka, and you repaid me by striking him!”

Ranma shoved her aside, freeing himself from her staff. He rubbed his throat. “Don’t talk to me about what’s right and wrong. I didn’t sign up for any of this bullshit. I saved your life, and the thanks I get is what—the pleasure of being mentally violated by a pale, skinny kid who’s been locked in the same room for years? You tell me how there’s anything right about that.”

The Captain eased off, hesitating. “It is not right, but it is necessary. It may be painful for Tilaka, but it is done for the good of the village. Nothing can ever be done to repay him for his sacrifice, but what we can do is ensure that he never needs to be Sieve again. That is why we need your help, Outsider. That is why _he_ needs your help.”

What a passionate plea from this girl—one who hardly showed anything other than irritation and stoicism, except when it came to this Tilaka.

“Captain,” said Ranma, “what is your name?”

She eyed him cautiously. “You know my name. I am Wuya, Captain of the Guard.”

“And what does it mean?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“It means _crow_ , doesn’t it?”

The Captain said nothing.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Ranma pressed. “Why else would Xiu be so pissed you saw that kid? Because it was you! You’re the one Tilaka was with at the spring! It could’ve been either one of you, but you stuck him with it, and here you are, big and lofty ‘Captain of the Guard,’ right? He thinks you’re dead! He thinks you killed yourself; is that how you convinced him to do what he does? Is that how you got him depressed enough to make himself a black hole, a cesspit for all the dirty things that you’d be thinking about if it weren’t for him?”

“That was not my choice!” Wuya shouted back. “The Lady and the Sieve before Tilaka chose. I would’ve done it. I _begged_ the Lady to take me instead, but she refused. She appointed me Captain instead. Do you know what she said to me that day? She said, ‘You who know sin are in the best position to defend us against it. You know the dangers our darkest drives pose.’ ”

“Some punishment, being tapped as Captain while your lover is being tortured in a dark room.”

“I won’t claim to have suffered the way Tilaka has suffered, but I have watched him, every day, knowing that I could not tell him I was still alive, and with the positions I hold, I have tried to do right, to do my duty. Xiu would have you suffer at my hand for what you have done.”

“Yeah, well, he sounds like a complete moron,” said Ranma.

The Captain huffed. “I am not fond of him either, and he does not understand debts.” She faced Ranma, tapping her staff once on the stairs. “You did me a favor, and I betrayed you. I asked you a favor, and you have betrayed me. There is nothing more between us now.”

“Oh yeah, saving a life against punching a kid out who was mind-raping me. We’re totally even.”

“Then we have an understanding.”

“Yeah, I understand you perfectly. You’re such a coward you keep going along with something you know is bullshit. If that’s how you treat a ‘friend’—”

He snatched a needle from the Captain’s belt and plunged it into her neck.

“Then this is how I treat you,” he whispered, catching the girl as she went limp. He laid her gently on the steps, not wanting to make a sound. There would be no going back from this deed, but he’d prepared for it. He knew what he had to do and how he could escape that god-forsaken place. He’d heard humming and flowing water. The potter in the bazaar had told him of exactly those things. They were what the channelers used to keep themselves focused, and without channelers, there would be no Maze to stop his escape. The channelers were in the tower, and Ranma would hunt them down if he had to.

To that end, he tip-toed up the stairs, for stealth was his only ally. He stole the oil lamps on the walls and placed them one at a time on the steps, as far in each corner as possible to minimize their light. Darkness could help him, but buying it had a price. The guards above began to chatter, and with a staff in hand, one of the Sorcerers crept downstairs, into the darkness.

And Ranma charged up the steps to deliver the first blow. He bowled the Sorcerer over head-first, slamming him into the steps.

BANG! A fireball exploded on the ceiling, lighting up the stair, and the heat of the flames singed the back of Ranma’s neck. Ranma had dealt with a human flamethrower before, though, and being on top of such a man wasn’t his favorite position. Ranma wrestled with the Sorcerer, choking the man from behind with his arm.

“I want you to lie still and count backwards from ten, all right?” said Ranma. “Say it with me now. ‘Ten, nine, eight…’ ”

Streaks of flame zipped by Ranma’s ears as the Sorcerer flailed.

 _It never is_ that _easy,_ thought Ranma, but within seconds, the Sorcerer was out, and Ranma rolled his body down the stairs for good measure. Just in the nick of time, too, for the Sorcerer’s partner stormed down the steps. The tower rattled, and cracks formed across the stairs.

Ranma jumped, kicking off the inside wall of the staircase, and a section of the stairs broke off, falling to three levels below. Ranma came back to his feet behind the Sorcerer and kicked the man sharply in the knee.

WHAM! The outside wall broke off and shoved Ranma against the center beam. He shook off the impact, staggering, and ducked a swipe of a staff.

“I don’t have time for this!” Ranma grabbed the staff with both hands, pulled the Sorcerer in, and headbutted him. The stunned Sorcerer wavered on his feet, and a single kick to his chest sent him tumbling down the broken steps to the part of the spiral below.

Shouts resonated through the tower; Ranma hadn’t exactly been subtle. Knowing time was short, he dashed up the stairs until the humming of the channelers grew loud and pronounced. He jogged through an unguarded doorway and navigated a maze of narrow passages, but as he ran, the channelers’ magic chord morphed and changed. One part at a time, it went from strong and resonant to somber and low. If they thought they could hide by changing their music, they were sadly wrong. Ranma had two good ears. All he had to do was follow the gradient in their magic chord. With each step, the sound grew louder, and he could make out the tiny inconsistencies in how the pitches matched each other—vibrato in one voice, a slight defect of pitch in another. Ranma traced the source back to a single square room, and he barged through the door to find…

“A fountain?”

The room was empty, save for a set of concentric, circular basins, each built on top of the next, and from a narrow fountainhead, water spewed forth, forming a fine dome that split up into droplets on the way down.

“Oh, I get it,” said Ranma. “The fountain looks like the tower itself. That’s creative.”

But where were the channelers? Their voices surrounded him, yet Ranma saw nothing.

_It’s just a trick of the mind._

Ranma paced about the room, listening as closely as he could. They had to still be in that room. Ranma would’ve heard if they’d left, unless the sound was an illusion, too. No, if that were the case, why let him hear anything at all? The sound was how they kept each other focused; they needed it to conjure any big spell as a group. They’d changed the spell to hide from him, but all Ranma had to do was break their concentration.

Even if he couldn’t see them, they had to be close. Ranma tensed his leg muscles and ran in one direction as fast as he could. He careened through invisible bodies, bringing them to light by the flames of hanging oil lamps. The channelers’ chord wavered and broke down. They popped into existence around him and scattered, and while some of them leaked through the doorway to the rest of the tower, Ranma scampered over block the rest from escaping.

“No you don’t,” said Ranma. “I can’t allow you to leave and join the rest of your guys to just start humming again.”

The remaining channelers—around a dozen in number—joined hands and backed away from Ranma. Pale and clothed in brown rags, they were pathetic and frightened. One dared to run for his life, and Ranma manhandled him with a couple of well-placed punches to the gut. The ease with which he set the man to the floor put a pit in Ranma’s stomach.

_I’m going to have to do this with every one of these people. Fantastic. Weak people who can’t fight worth a damn, and I have to make sure they can’t concentrate or hum a tune even when I’m gone._

But it was necessary, and he could see no other way around it. He balled both his fists and stalked toward to the group of channelers.

“No, no, please!” said one, a woman with short, dark hair. “Please, Japanese outsider. You are Japanese, yes? You don’t need to hurt us; please, don’t, we beg you!”

“What are you going to do—promise me you won’t start channeling that spell again when I’m gone?”

“You can douse us with the water,” said the woman, pointing out the fountain. “We won’t be able to maintain the Maze then.”

“Why? What does the water do?”

“It makes our magic weaker.”

Shouts in Chinese echoed through the halls. The Sorcerer Guard had to be onto him as a whole by then, and any of them left in the tower would soon come after him. “Fine,” said Ranma, “douse yourselves, or we do this the hard way. Your choice!”

The channelers gathered by the fountain, cupping their hands to scoop up water while Ranma went to the outside wall. A narrow window opened up to the night beyond. The best he could hope for was that he’d distracted enough channelers to weaken the Maze, even if he hadn’t gotten all of them, even if some still tried to maintain the spell. He climbed through the window, and—

KA-PAM!

The wall exploded, blowing inwards and showering Ranma in a pile of rubble. He fell back on his shoulder and scrambled back to his feet. From outside, six Guardsmen floated through the breach in the wall, and even more rushed in by the doorway. They pulled the channelers away from the fountain, rushing the helpless spellcasters to the rest of the tower, and Ranma, still woozy on his feet from the sudden blast, could only watch them go. It was pointless to try to stop them; he’d only managed to catch a small fraction of them all.

And he no longer cared. They were going to make life painful for him; it seemed only fair to return the favor—or even to pay it back ten times over. He clenched his fist and faced the Sorcerers by the breach in the wall with only mayhem and fury in his eyes.

“Enough!”

From the doorway, the woman in white robes with jade trimming glided into the room, her footsteps smooth and steady. Sindoor stepped in front of her Guardsmen, watching Ranma with her icy gaze.

“That’s quite enough, Saotome Ranma,” she said. “We have endeavored to treat you with respect, but our needs are paramount. Desist, or we will use all necessary force to subdue you.”

“You do that,” said Ranma. “You talk about respect, but I know your dirty little secret, Sindoor! I know who and what the Sieve is!”

She smiled to herself, amused. “If that is all you know, then you haven’t even begun to understand who and what we are.” She approached Ranma, standing directly before him, and looked down on him past her nose. “Enough of this. I warn you, if you continue to resist, the results could be quite unpleasant.”

 _Yeah, I’m sure they will be. For you._ Ranma slammed his fist against her breastbone, and the Lady flew backward, banging her head on the wall.

“Kill the Outsider!” cried a voice. “She’s assaulted the Lady!”

A lightning bolt zipped past Ranma’s face, and a film of ice crept over the floor. Struggling for footing, Ranma slipped and slid toward the doorway. He caught a Sorcerer’s staff as it swung to struck him, and on the frictionless surface, he turned its momentum against its owner, spinning on one heel to throw the Sorcerer into his comrades. The Guardsmen fell over like bowling pins.

TISS! A flash of flame burned at his eyes and lit his clothes on fire! Shutting his eyes tightly, Ranma patted at his body wherever he felt heat. When he couldn’t see his foes to avoid them, he listened instead. He pushed off the walls, sliding from danger when it neared, but with his eyes watering and stinging, he couldn’t see when a hand took hold of his arm and kept him in place.

“The Prince may have taken his own life.” Sindoor plucked a hair from Ranma’s head and held it out, in front of his face, for him to see even through tearing eyes. “But that doesn’t mean the magic he found within him is totally lost.”

The strand of hair disintegrated, leaving a fine dust of black ash in the air.

“If you cannot behave yourself, then this is the only fate that you will find.”

She would turn him to ash, just as Bailu had ripped the life force from hundreds of men. With just his fists and his wits, Ranma lacked the ability to go toe-to-toe with such a force.

But he could learn. He could learn how to fight them, how to withstand their magic and turn it against them. Then, nothing would keep him caged in that twisted village.

“Well, Saotome Ranma?” the Lady intoned, her fingertip drawing close to his ear, his face.

“Okay, wait!” said Ranma, shying away from her. “You want to get Saffron; I can help you do it. I’ve been to Mount Phoenix. I know the layout, and I know the people. If you want to get him with as little fighting as possible, I’m your best bet. If you harm me instead, you won’t stand a chance. All the Phoenix put together will defend their mountain to the last man. They’ll cut you down to size, you’ll see.”

Sindoor smiled to herself, standing up to loom over Ranma once more with her satisfied grin. “We will see about that. Once the Guard has learned from your experience with the Phoenix, we will see about that.”

And so, the Ranma and the Sorcerers reached an accord—one Ranma never intended to uphold. Those people had done nothing to earn his trust, and he would cooperate with them only as long as it bought him time. All that mattered was getting away from these people and their twisted ways.

Even if the Sorcerers and the Phoenix had to go to war to give him the chance.


	3. Pride

For twenty years, the Sorcerers of Qinghai had secluded themselves behind their Maze—an illusion no ordinary man could ever hope to navigate. It acted as a barrier, keeping them safe from anyone who might wish to intrude on their home, but the residents of the village were free to come and go as they wished, whether to hunt game, to forage for berries and nuts, or to journey far and wide by the Lady’s command.

It was for this last reason that a procession of hooded figures departed from the Sorcerer village one morning. They were not warriors; they carried no staves as those of the Guard did. They were priests—masters of mending or corrupting flesh and manipulators of the mind. The Lady’s head priest was a short, unassuming woman named Henna. Even among the priests she was unique, for she kept her head shaved bare, and she seldom spoke above a whisper.

That morning she led five of her brothers and sisters away from the village. Dark green hooded cloaks helped protect them from the wind and cold, and they carried hefty packs to sustain them on the rest of their journey. But though their departure wasn’t forbidden, that didn’t mean they weren’t watched as they left—and not by their fellow Sorcerers, either. Henna felt the eyes upon her as she led her party. She felt through through the ripples and flows of magic that permeated all things. Though her sense of it was faint and clouded, she halted the group with just a signal from her hand. She closed her eyes, searching their surroundings with her mind. Where a normal man would’ve dismissed a rustling of branches as an innocent coincidence, Henna saw and sensed more. She turned to one of her subordinates and gave her instructions quietly, as she always did.

“I think there are people watching us,” she said, “hiding behind the rocks up the slope. Would you go up there and make sure?”

“How?” asked the man.

“You have my forgiveness. Do what you must.”

The man nodded, and he circled behind a tree, taking a canteen with him. The rest of the priests, including Henna, averted their gazes, and after a short time, the only sound that could be heard was that of footsteps around them—footsteps that left light impressions in the dirt without a hint of the man who made them. Leaving the party as sight unseen, the priest headed up the slope, and Henna waved the rest of her party to move forward and pretend all was well. Hopefully, that there were only five priests in line instead of six would confuse their unwelcome guests long enough to find out something about them.

And find out something they did—that the people watching them were not easily fooled. “They’re walking among us!” cried a voice. “Shoot, shoot!”

Thud! An arrow lodged in a tree trunk, just one foot away from Henna’s head. The priests crouched down, taking cover behind the trees.

“Go back!” Henna hissed to her priests, waving them toward the village.

As four foes rose from the rocks above, climbing down with swords and maces at the ready, Henna and her priests fled back to the safety of the village, knowing that the Maze would protect them even when their own magic could not.

  


“Riverfolk?” asked Ranma. “Never heard of those people.”

In her tranquil meditation chambers, Lady Sindoor knelt at the edge of the rectangular pool, listening intently to the trickling water as it flowed in. Behind her stood Ranma and the Captain of the Guard, Wuya, who’d gathered there to hear about the enemy on their doorstep and what steps would be taken to defeat them.

“I admit, I’m uncertain what to call them in your tongue,” said Sindoor. “They are a matriarchal people, which isn’t uncommon here, but they like to pretend they were first. Still, _Riverfolk_ is our name for them, mostly for their rare skill in controlling water to make for powerful attacks. They are an ancient tribe, and we have feuded with them many times—the last time just twenty years ago.”

“ ‘Just,’ you say.” Ranma scoffed. “I guess that’s short on a geological time scale, but I’m not even twenty years old.”

Sindoor chuckled to herself. “Nor is the captain who stands beside you. Years pass quickly in these lands. Still, memories linger. We haven’t forgotten how they came to the base of the waterfall and cornered our Captain. I’m sure they haven’t forgotten how most of their warriors were turned to ash.”

 _Ah,_ thought Ranma. _It’s those people._

“Very strange that they would be here now,” mused Sindoor. “They didn’t follow you on the way to the spring ground, did they, Captain?”

“They didn’t,” said Wuya.

“Curious. They used to watch us very closely, but I’d thought they’d grown tired of such waiting. Well, we shall have to find out for ourselves what the they want. It will not do at all to have outsiders watching us. If the Riverfolk have become friends of the Phoenix in recent years, Saffron will be alerted of our arrival, and that is something I cannot allow. Captain, you will lead this effort. Capture the Riverfolk; find out why they have come. Hopefully, they are merely being wary. The last thing we can afford to do is go to war with them and the Phoenix, too. Once the Riverfolk are ours, we can move forward with the effort to take Saffron. There is no better place to do that than at the spring ground.”

Ranma raised an eyebrow. “You want to go back to Jusenkyō? What for?”

“The tunnels and infrastructure of the mountain there make it ideal to house a fighting force,” said Sindoor. “If we are being monitored, I would like to establish a presence for the Guard outside the village, and controlling the water that supplies Mount Phoenix may be useful, too. Our attack on Mount Phoenix will come from the spring ground. That is why the Captain here will gather the full force she’s been training for this task and take them to the spring ground with any Riverfolk we capture. There is no need to endanger the people of the village in doing so.”

The Captain narrowed her eyes but said nothing.

“What about me?” Ranma demanded. “You need me to help train up for this war you’re going to fight. If you leave me here, then you’re doing all your final preparations without the only person who can tell you about the Phoenix over the last twenty years. That’s not smart, if you ask me.”

“The Captain and I will take that point under advisement,” said Sindoor.

“Uh-huh. Does that mean more in this country than the bureaucratic bullshit it sounds like?”

Sindoor handled Ranma’s cutting remark with her characteristic coolness. “Only time will tell,” she said. “Now then, you have your instructions. If there is nothing else—”

“My lady,” Wuya interrupted, “I must ask something: why did you send priests from the village? Why are they the ones to discover we’re being observed?”

This remark spurred a reaction from Sindoor. She turned her head slightly, and in Chinese, she answered the Captain flatly, giving no room for interpretation or questioning.

“Now, leave me,” she said. “I must meditate.”

The Captain bowed at the waist for Sindoor while Ranma rolled his eyes for a mocking nod. Wuya pulled on Ranma’s arm to show him out, but when the stone door to Sindoor’s chambers shut itself, he yanked his hand free.

“What was that about?” he demanded. “She sent priests from the village? Without protection?”

Wuya walked past Ranma, saying nothing. She made for the double doors at the entrance to the tower and Sindoor’s court, but Ranma stormed after her, insistent.

“Hey! You must think there’s something wrong with that, or else you wouldn’t have said anything!” He came up beside her and lowered his voice. “Because you know it smells just like the way she keeps your boyfriend locked up in the top of this tower, don’t you?”

Flinching, Wuya glanced around, ensuring that no one else had heard Ranma’s comment. “She wouldn’t say,” was her answer.

“You expect me to believe that? If she’s going to have you set up a base at Jusenkyō, you’re going to be away from Tilaka. Does that really sit well with you?”

“That,” said Wuya, “is exactly why I must go, why the Lady must send me. We are not like you, Outsider. We don’t revel in pleasures of the mind or flesh. We do what is needed to keep our brethren safe and sane. There is no power in such bonds, only regret.”

“You don’t believe that,” said Ranma. “You don’t stand by someone for the better part of ten years watching them suffer if you believe that.”

“We do what is required of us,” Wuya insisted, “even if we dislike it.”

At the edge of tower grounds’ topmost ring, Wuya left Ranma to walk among her trainees in the Sorcerer Guard, and Ranma, unamused, squinted his eyes. “ ‘We do what is required of us.’ What a joke. People do whatever they want, Wuya, or whatever other people will let them do.”

Of course, these words were wasted on the Captain, who’d long since left him. Still, his comment encapsulated his position in the Sorcerer village all too well. He was trapped between what he wanted to do and what the Sorcerers would permit. Naturally they had no incentive to let him walk free while they thought he was helping them prepare to fight Phoenix people. In turn, Ranma was unwilling to wait for them to assault Mount Phoenix, either, for if they looked for Saffron there as a source of power—the successor to their soul-sucking Sieve—they’d find only a baby instead. If only to torture Ranma for his deception, they’d never let him go then.

The only way out, then, was to fight, but Ranma had tried that, too—coming up short as he’d invaded the tower to neutralize the channelers there, the people who held up the disorienting Maze that surrounded the village. One-on-one, these Sorcerers didn’t impress him. They had more holes in their technique than a slice of Swiss cheese, but there were many of them, and any one man could surprise Ranma with an array of magical powers that would slow him down and force him to adapt. He didn’t fear their magic, but it took time to fight through wind master, one who’d conjure endless tornadoes to spin Ranma around, and that was one of the more benign possibilities that came to Ranma’s mind. He could easily think of some combination of powers that would be much worse to face. In no way did Ranma doubt he could defeat any given Sorcerer—or even five or ten of them—but as soon as he’d get through them, there’d be a dozen more waiting, all willing to buffet and batter him with their vast powers. What a pain.

So over the course of the past week, Ranma had observed the Sorcerers closely, trying to gain some insight into their magic and how to defeat it more efficiently—or better yet, to use it himself. Thus far he’d enjoyed a privileged position to do so. Part of his agreement with Sindoor was to provide knowledge and insight into the Phoenix people and to help oversee the Guard’s training. He’d help up that end of the bargain as best he could; he just may have neglected to mention one or two things here and there.

“If you guys want to defeat Saffron, you’ll need to understand who and what he is,” Ranma had said once to the trainees. “Saffron is an egotistical little man-child who doesn’t know his own limits. Now, I don’t know what kind of punishment you guys can take, but this?” Ranma held up a rock the size of his head for all to see. “I play table tennis with this. Saffron, on the other hand, can’t take a little beating to save his life.”

Of course, the Sorcerers believed Saffron to be alive, so luckily for Ranma, this set of facts convinced the Sorcerers to train for two days solid in improving their physical strength—magic-enhanced when necessary, but still the same basic techniques. No doubt brute force could prove useful against the Phoenix, but since the Sorcerers would never face Saffron in battle. They were all wasting their time, but at least it gave Ranma the chance to observe and learn something about Sorcerer magic.

 _It’s all just ki manipulation,_ he’d realized. _They’re moving it around in their bodies to gain power. Maybe they sense it from others, too._

And ki was something he knew how to work with. He’d played with confidence and despair before and turned those emotions into weapons, but they were raw and unfocused, prone to fizzling out with a turn of mood. Sorcerer magic demanded more control. It was likely why they needed a Sieve to keep them steady in the first place.

Regardless, Ranma knew well enough how to turn his emotions into destructive power. What interested him was something more precise. If raw ki could blow up a wall one meter thick and leave nothing behind, what Ranma wanted was the ability to drill through that wall instead and leave no evidence but a tiny pinprick. That’s what the Sorcerers could do. They could call down lightning to strike one specific spot and leave the rest of the world untouched, and Wuya’s ability to defend herself with her magic shield had made Ranma look silly at times.

But try as he might, Ranma couldn’t get the hang of Sorcerer magic. Where even the youngest members of the Guard could shoot jets of flame from their open hands, the most Ranma could do was contort his hand awkwardly, looking like a poor, impotent imitation of Spiderman. Naturally, the Captain and her subordinates had no inclination to help Ranma with these techniques, leaving him to wonder—just what was he supposed to do?

It was a question he pondered every day, and that day was no exception. With this journey back to Jusenkyō looming, there was opportunity—the chance to escape. He desperately needed to take advantage of it. To do that, he retreated to his hut, surrounded by four guards that stood around his straw home tirelessly. With his back to the door, he sat down and concentrated. He focused his efforts on a small pebble. If he should learn anything about Sorcerer magic, it was that they could move objects without touching them. That was undoubtedly useful. But what was the secret? Should he stare at it intently until it withered under his gaze? Should he lose himself in meditation until the round pebble floated all on its own?

In theory, Sorcerer magic—and ki manipulation in general—relied on one’s own emotions. Was that the trick? If so, it should’ve been simple. All he had to do was fixate on how badly he wanted to punch Wuya in the face. It was a satisfying image, to think about giving that ungrateful captain a bloody nose, but the pebble before him was unmoved.

“Figures,” said Ranma, drawing in the dirt with his finger. Idly, he traced out a circle around the pebble and sighed. What else could he try? Could he find inspiration in something lofty, something to make him open his mind? Would world peace bring him satisfaction? How about a chocolate parfait?

_A parfait would be nice, considering all I haven’t had much to eat out here, but that doesn’t do anything special for me._

Maybe the solution was to think of something he really wanted instead.

At a loss, Ranma lay flat on his back, staring at the hut’s ceiling. Ultimately, what he wanted was simple—to be cured and to go home. Staying focused on that could only help him in the long run. It’d already been a week since he remembered waking up in that village. Going home was at least as important to him as getting his cure. His hopes for what would happen after that were pretty modest. If each day was dull and boring, it would be an improvement over being a prisoner in a faraway land. The home he’d known for almost a year would do fine. He’d go to school, which could be okay at some points and boring at others. After a while, he’d hardly noticed what happened in classes. He’d just walk to school along the canal road and head back when the day was done, oblivious to everything else around him.

Well, except when Akane—the girl beside him on those walks—would intrude on his thoughts. In particular, Ranma recalled the morning after the failed wedding attempt. For some reason, Akane had the brilliant idea to challenge him to a race. She must’ve known it was a losing proposition, for she took off through the front gate to the house as soon as he agreed, and when he protested, she shrugged it off. “Are you going to complain or come catch me?” she’d called back to him with a giggle.

He’d caught her all right. Really, she overestimated her own strength and endurance. Being shrunk and dehydrated in the battle with Saffron had taken more out of her than anyone could know. Out of charity, Ranma settled for a draw when Akane’s fatigue overcame her, and they’d walked together, side by side, at a more leisurely pace for the rest of the way. Were every day like that, Ranma could be content. Even seeing Akane red in the face from exhaustion yet still able to smile brightly—that was quite a surprise.

But that was weeks ago, and too much had happened since. Ranma forced the memory out of his mind. It would do him no good to reminisce on such things, and the fleeting, momentary wonder in his heart ebbed away, until all he could see was the straw ceiling of the hut and sunlight finding its way through the cracks. None of that mattered while he was still a captive of the Sorcerers, and to revel in memories that way was nothing short of lazy and misguided. He was a man, wasn’t he? He was a man on a mission, and he didn’t have time to stroll down memory lane looking for something he’d lost.

“You knot up your own ki,” said a voice. “That is why you can’t perform our magic.”

Ranma sat up and glanced at the doorway from the corner of his eye. Stepping inside was a woman in a hooded green cloak. Her head was bald—shaved right to the scalp—and her eyes had a distinctive, silvery hue.

“Who are you?” asked Ranma.

“The Lady sends me,” she said quietly. “My name is Henna. I am a priest. The Lady wishes you to know that your plea to accompany the party tomorrow has been accepted. I am to see that you can be properly restrained.”

“What does that mean?”

The priest opened her robes, revealing a collection of small, hand-crafted glass vials, each sealed off by string and a leathery covering. She uncapped one of these vials and held it under Ranma’s nose. “Please smell this.”

“Are you serious?”

“The Lady prefers that you be able to walk for the journey, but if we must, we will carry you unconscious instead.”

And if they knocked him out, he’d wake up at Jusenkyō having missed a substantial opportunity to escape. So with a sigh, Ranma wafted the vapors from the vial into his nose. The concoction burned a little, and he turned away, coughing violently. His eyes stung and watered. “Gee,” he remarked, “you guys don’t kid around.”

“No, we don’t.” The priest held out a twig, and with the tip of her finger, she lit the end of the stick on fire. She gazed into Ranma’s eyes, studying his reaction, and blew the fire out when she was done. She went to her robes once more, fetching another vial. Well, if she was going to be so direct about treating Ranma like a lab experiment, the least she could do was humor him.

“How do you do that?” asked Ranma. “Light it on fire, I mean. You said I almost had it?”

“Almost,” said the priest, “but I think it’s pointless for you to try. Even if you weren’t holding all your ki inside you, tangled and knotted, a body like that will always be inefficient at using ki to manipulate the outside world.”

 _Inefficient my ass. I beat your captain like this._ But Ranma ignored the point. If the priest thought Ranma incapable of using magic, all the better. She would be less on her guard as he probed her about it. “You know I’m cursed?” he asked. “You can get me some hot water then, right?”

“Please sniff.”

Sighing, Ranma snorted, hoping the brief exposure could be mitigated by an unproductive breath. His vision clouded for a moment, and his lips went numb and tingled. He shook off the sensation, but Henna must’ve found it interesting: she took notes on a small scroll, nodding as she watched him. “Yes,” she finally answered. “We can all sense it. It is as apparent as the dirt on your face.”

Ranma wiped at his cheek idly. “Or as the boobs on my chest. So, about that hot water…?”

“I have nothing on hand to help you. I take it you don’t choose this form?”

“Hell no! Why would I _want_ to be a girl? I’m shorter and smaller. I can’t take a hit as well. I have to get closer just to strike someone, and that’s not even the half of it!”

“I feel the same way,” said Henna. “It makes your reflection from your own. It is an unnatural form, resistant to flows of ki.”

“So you’re saying I can’t use your magic?”

“You might, but it will be wasteful and difficult. Your task is to help us defeat the Phoenix. An outsider using magic won’t make much of a difference there.”

 _It won’t_ help _you people very much, no. I definitely agree with that._ “Still,” said Ranma, the sensation in his lips returning, “I’m a student of many arts. Consider me interested.”

The priest laughed to herself—a restrained but genuine gesture—and put another vial under Ranma’s nose. “I don’t think that very wise. We all know how you tried to harm the channelers.”

Ranma tightened his chest and pretended to heave, hoping Henna wouldn’t notice the deception. Surely even she couldn’t expect he’d take this experimentation forever. “Okay, I get it,” he said. “You’re a priest; you don’t do crazy magic the way the Guard does. You don’t have to pretend for me. It’s not like being a healer and a chemist is a bad thing. You get to work with test tubes—you know, instead of being badass.”

Henna frowned at that, and as she secured the third vial with its leathery cover, she knelt in front of Ranma, holding her hands flat, facing each other, and about a foot apart. “One can wield magic directly, and some people do, but most of us find it more useful to use magic to influence the world around us instead. A man must connect his emotions to the world, to use them as a channel, opening himself to the outside. The mistake many beginners make, whether in the Guard or in my priesthood, is that they think ki only exists to be bent to their will. It isn’t so.”

“So how can you make ki do what you want, then?”

Pursing her lips, Henna considered the question carefully. “How can I say it? You must forget what you want to do with ki at all. You must make the process of connecting your emotions to ki come first and foremost. Consider ice, for example. It is cold, but a man’s emotions can be colder. He can draw heat into himself from the air, and then…”

A filament of snowflakes formed between her hands, and it solidified into a thin, narrow icicle. Henna caught the filament before it could fall and gave it to Ranma to feel. Sure enough, it was frozen, and in Ranma’s grip it began to melt.

 _A connection with the outside world, huh?_ As corny as it sounded, Ranma couldn’t deny the power inherent to what the priest had shown him.

When Henna was done exposing Ranma to all manner of hazardous fumes, he meditated again. Cold was something he knew well enough. The so-called “Soul of Ice” was the heart of _Hiryū Shōten Ha_ , the Heaven Blast of the Dragon. Manifesting cold ki around him was nothing unusual, then, but could he control it further? Could he confine that cold to a damaging filament or a protective sheet?

He would try. He tried putting away the memories of fighting Saffron with his life and another’s line. He buried thoughts of the disastrous wedding that ended with his cure gulped down like cheap sake. And if for one day he could run to school at Akane’s side, grateful that she was still alive, he ignored any happiness he might’ve felt in that moment, too. All his disappointment, anger, and joy faded away until there was little more than a cold heart beating in his chest, and even that slowed down to a dangerously lethargic rhythm.

So insulated from his own thoughts, he pulled in heat from the outside instead. As Henna had done, he held his hands out, side by side, and concentrated on the space between them. Snowflakes winked into existence there, tumbling end over end as they made their way to the ground. Yes, he could use these. He would use them to beat these Sorcerers and make his way home, to show that girl, and anyone else who’d doubted him, how much of a man he could be.

And as quickly as the snowflakes had come, they touched his hands and melted.

Tap-tap. One of the guards outside touched the tip of his staff on the hut wall. “What are you doing, Outsider?” he asked, peering through the doorway.

“Nothing,” said Ranma. “Just thinking.”

Frowning, the Sorcerer went back to his post, and with an intense, focused look on his face, Ranma tried to recapture that feeling—or lack thereof—again. All night, Ranma practiced this brand of ice magic, keeping his efforts hidden from prying eyes by turning his back to the hut’s doorway, so he could form all the ice he wanted from the air unobserved. The results were promising—Ranma could conjure films of ice on the ground and even reproduce the filament that Henna had shown him easily enough—but something was holding him back. Without a picture of what he wanted to do with ice, how could he effectively manipulate it? What Henna said didn’t make sense.

And until he could figure it out, he couldn’t rely on this magic to give him a clear-cut advantage. At best, Ranma could hope to surprise a Sorcerer he fought, relying more on such powers being unexpected than anything else.

  


An hour before dawn, the Guard came to take Ranma, flanked by a half-dozen priests, including the soft-spoken Henna. This time, she didn’t play around with a set of vials for Ranma to try. With leathery gloves to protect herself, she applied an oily balm to Ranma’s nose and upper lip—a foul-smelling concoction that put Ranma in a haze, and try as he might, the mixture wouldn’t rub off. The vapors made the light of the morning sun brighter, and the calls of songbirds in the morning warped into shrill, piercing shrieks. All through his head there was a pulsing, intense pain that made it difficult to see straight or think.

_Great, just what I need—a migraine headache when we’re about to hike to Jusenkyō._

Despite Ranma’s condition, the Sorcerers took no chances, keeping him chained up and surrounded by a group of four Guardsmen. The caravan met on the tower grounds by the base of the waterfall. All told, there were around thirty Sorcerers of the Guard, six priests, and fifteen channelers—who were kept far, far away from Ranma. Wuya called this group just the first wave, at that. More Guardsmen would be sent to Jusenkyō to prepare, with food and supplies to last until the Sorcerers went to war. For the moment, however, the party would pursue its first goal—to draw out the mysterious Riverfolk, wherever they were hiding.

 _These Riverfolk might be my best shot,_ thought Ranma, wincing even to concentrate that much. _An enemy of the Sorcerers is a friend of mine. Hopefully these Riverfolk don’t think I’m in league with Sindoor. It’s not like I have a record of making friends with Chinese tribes, after all._

The Sorcerer party set out just after dawn. The channelers took the lead in the group, and as part of the Sorcerers’ deception, they’d dressed the channelers to look like Guardsmen, complete with black tunics and battle staves. Sure, anyone with a keen, discriminating eye could tell them apart from the real warriors—just the way they carried themselves was off, and they walked with linked hands. Still, Ranma thought it an ingenious move not to paint a target on their backs, like the priests had with their conspicuous green cloaks. 

After about half an hour of hiking—it felt like days to Ranma’s foggy mind, but he knew it couldn’t have been that long—Captain Wuya moved up from the middle of the caravan, making contact with the head channeler, and even from a distance, Ranma’s hyper-sensitive hearing picked up on the sequence of tones the channelers hummed, forming a resonant major chord. Though his eyes stung and ached, Ranma glanced about the forest, trying to catch sight of these Riverfolk. At some point, these tribal people would have to figure out they’d been trapped, and either they’d surrender—not likely—or they’d fight back. If Ranma knew where they were coming from, at least he could get out of the line of fire.

Thud! An arrow struck one of Ranma’s guards in the chest, and the man keeled over into the arms of his companions, dragging Ranma off his feet as the shackle chains pulled taut.

_Oh hell. Here we go!_

Splayed out on his back, Ranma fought the throbbing pain in his head, trying to get upright, but he was tangled in shackles and chains. There was shouting—painful shouting that made his ears ache. The Riverfolk attacked from the east, using the rising sun to attack from the shelter of its light. They took cover behind trees, firing arrows into the unprotected caravan. The Captain raised her golden shell of ki, protecting the channelers at the front; for the rest of them, the priests ran for cover, and the Sorcerers of the Guard fought back with a slew of elemental powers. Lightning bolts shattered tree trunks where the Riverfolk archers shot from, and the earth itself moved, forming a colossal landslide to bury them.

Yet still, despite the unholy levels of destruction the Sorcerers brought upon them, the Riverfolk persisted. They even dared to stand toe-to-toe against the Guard. A girl with a pair of massive steel balls on a rope—a meteor hammer—charged into the caravan, dazzling the Sorcerers with awesome combination strikes. She threw one of the spheres as a projectile weapon, collecting it thanks to the tension in her rope. Then, she swung both balls overhead, swinging them down with deadly force. She crushed or beat three Sorcerers before the lot of them had a chance to catch up to her. A high-powered gust of wind blew out Ranma’s ears and shot the girl with the meteor hammer away like a human cannonball.

But she wasn’t the only one. An intrepid archer watched her back as she fell. Daring to step into close range, he ran from tree to tree for cover, zipping arrows into the fray. An arrow found another of Ranma’s guards, giving him the dead weight of two men to fight against, and a second shot whizzed past Ranma’s head, grazing the end of his pigtail.

_Oh great, they’re trying to kill me, too!_

And despite the pounding in his head, Ranma wasn’t going to let even a migraine headache get him killed. He kicked and yanked at his shackles, bringing the rest of his guards down. With his bare hands, he twisted the chain links, and the metal sheared, snapping off. Grabbing two of the broken chains, he spun on his feet, picking the wounded Sorcerers up off the ground. He hurled the bodies at the archer, shattering two trees with the force of the blows.

The Riverfolk archer shielded his eyes from the flying debris, and that gave Ranma a chance. He pounced on the archer, and with the iron shackles around his wrists, he punched and bashed at the man’s face. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to try harder than that!” he cried.

“Stop!” The archer vainly tried to cover his face, refusing to resist. “Stop, please!”

Why? Just because he could speak Japanese? “Give me a reason!” shouted Ranma.

“Because we’re trying to save you, Saotome Ranma!”

Ranma stayed his hand for a moment, taking the archer by his collar instead. “Why would some Riverfolk people I’ve never heard of want to save me? Why would they even know my name?”

“Riverfolk?” echoed the archer. “That’s not what we call ourselves. We’re Amazons.”

Amazons? Shampoo’s people? Of course, how could he not see it before? The archer’s outfit was almost a carbon copy of Mousse’s usual attire. And here he’d bruised and scratched up this Amazon archer for nothing.

“How do we break through their illusion?” asked the archer. “Do you know? We can’t escape otherwise!”

The secret was the channelers, which the Captain had well protected. Ranma looked over the scene of the battle. The girl with the meteor hammer had been cornered, surrounded by half a dozen Sorcerers. Further off, Amazons struggled to climb out of the torrent of earth and dirt that had overwhelmed them.

“It’s too late,” muttered Ranma. “You’re not getting out of here, either. Whatever else you tell them, you don’t know anything about Saffron, or if you do know something, he’s still alive. You got me?”

The archer nodded.

“Good. Sorry about this.” Ranma slugged the archer once more for good measure, just as a set of Guardsmen came up from the middle of the caravan and pulled Ranma away. The archer struggled—a token gesture of resistance—but the Sorcerers got the Riverfolk prisoners they wanted. Ranma just had to hope the Amazons could hold their tongues.

  


The Sorcerers made off with six Amazon prisoners, preferring to sedate all of them while the caravan moved on. Ironically, Ranma’s effort to capture the archer had earned him a little credit with the Captain, and since the Sorcerers had no more shackles to bind him, they were content to leave Ranma unrestrained for the rest of the trip. Alas, Ranma couldn’t think of how to take advantage of this freedom. The fight had taken a lot out of him. As far as he could see, he was walking through soup, and more than once he stepped on a tree root or divot in the earth that tweaked his ankle or caused him to stumble. In truth, he had much more on his mind than how to keep his footing on the rough terrain of the Tibetan Plateau.

_Amazons, here?_

As nice as it was to have allies (if he believed that they were saving him out of the goodness of their hearts, instead of as leverage to make him marry Shampoo), Ranma found this development potentially very dangerous. The Amazons knew him. They knew his name, and Shampoo had been there to see what really happened to Saffron. If the Sorcerers managed to coax the truth about Saffron from just one Amazon prisoner, it could get them all killed.

For this reason, when the caravan stopped for the night, Ranma urged Wuya to keep the Amazons sedated until they reached Jusenkyō. The time to interrogate them could wait until they were secure, after all, and while it cost Ranma a chance to try to break free and take out the channelers overnight, he felt he had to be pragmatic about it: while he was alive, he could always try to escape. If the truth came out, he would be out of chances, and the moment they confronted him about it, he’d have to fight for his life no matter how bad the odds were.

It was by the middle of the afternoon the second day that the party reached Jusenkyō, and the Sorcerers wasted no time establishing their presence. High above the springs, the Sorcerers occupied the tunnels and passages of Mount Kensei. Out of caution, Ranma was kept at the base of the mountain while the channelers were shown inside—a costly loss in that Ranma would have no idea where they were hiding. Still, he had other things to worry about.

Like with the channelers, the Amazons were shown into the mountain, and Ranma insisted on being present to observe the interrogation. Gods only knew what would happen if the Sorcerers questioned the Amazons with him elsewhere and they came up with the wrong answers. Grudgingly, Captain Wuya granted this request, and through the back door at the base of the mountain, Ranma was shown inside. The Sorcerers led Ranma past a gaping chasm, traversing the gap on a set of logs. There lay a series of round cells in the walls, each secured by a grate of vertical bars. By the light of a torch, Ranma glimpsed the occupants—the archer he’d beaten up and the brave, short-haired girl with the meteor hammer.

“There were others,” said Ranma. “Where did they go?”

“The priests have them,” explained Captain Wuya. “They will use their own methods.”

Ranma grimaced at that. Henna had given him some unknowing help, but could he count on them all being clueless and ineffective?

The Captain tapped her staff on the bars, drawing the Amazons’ attention. “Explain yourselves, Riverfolk. What are your intentions in spying on us?”

The archer stepped up. “What are _your_ intentions, Sorcerer? Where have you taken us? Why leave your protective bubble after so long? Did you think we wouldn’t notice that you’d left? We’ve been watching. We’ve always been watching. Not many people would forget losing hundreds of their brothers to the likes of you!”

With her open hand, the Captain shot a beam of ki through the archer, who keeled over, crying out in pain. The girl who’d used the meteor hammer ran to his side, but he kept her at bay, holding his own.

“What are you doing here?” the Captain asked again.

Struggling to his feet, the archer glared daggers at Wuya, but he answered plainly. “At any time, there are eight scouting parties around your village. We rotate, spending two weeks in the wild and two weeks back in the village. We just took over for the last group about five days ago.”

“A lie,” said Wuya. “Your people gave up on standing vigil for our return years ago.”

“No, we only just eluded you until now.”

Wuya narrowed her eyes—and in fairness, Ranma thought it sounded pretty thin, too—but she didn’t press the point. “Tell me about the state of things in the world. What of the People’s Republic?”

“They’re having a border conflict with the Soviets, like they’ve been having for the last twenty years. Deng is in charge now. Mao died about ten or fifteen years ago. What else do you want to know?”

“About the Tribe of the Restless Dreamers—what of them?”

Ranma raised an eyebrow. What did that have to do with anything? Was it just a junk question to throw the Amazons off?

“Massacred, about six years ago,” answered the archer. “As I understand it, the PLA run a communications outpost in the ruins.”

“And the Tribe of the Eternal Flame?”

The archer hesitated. “The Phoenix?” he asked, glancing to Ranma. “I’d heard rumors a bird drowned in their spring and made them all cursed. They’ve been reclusive, rather like you people.”

“But they are still led by Saffron?”

Ranma stepped back, sliding out of Wuya’s sight. He watched the Amazon archer from the corner of his eye and nodded subtly to give him the proper cue.

“Yes, of course,” said the archer. “Who else would they follow?”

It was all Ranma could to let out a relieved breath and not be heard as he did.

“He is mature, then?” Wuya pressed.

The archer looked to Ranma again.

“Sorry, what was the question?” asked Ranma.

Wuya turned her head halfway, eyeing him curiously. “I asked the Riverfolk if Saffron is mature. _You_ shouldn’t be concerned with answering.”

Ranma nodded. “Of course, of course. I’m not trying to do anything, honest.”

“Naturally Saffron is mature,” said the archer, and though Ranma feared his tone betrayed a bit of hesitation and uncertainty, Wuya didn’t seem to pick up on it.

“This was recent? Or did the transformation occur some time ago?”

Ranma froze. Just how was he supposed to help the Amazon answer that? One finger for first, two for second?

“Just a few weeks ago,” answered the archer, to Ranma’s relief. “From what I heard, his last incarnation must’ve fizzled out nine or ten years ago. I’m not quite sure how, though.”

“I see.” Captain Wuya turned aside, exposing Ranma to the Amazon archer. “Do you know this girl?”

“I’m a guy,” Ranma insisted.

“I know of her,” said the archer. “She and her panda friend came to our village last year and disrupted the annual martial arts festival. As far as I know, one of our finest warriors was going to follow her to Japan and back to kill her. I only thought to save the girl some trouble by killing her myself, especially for consorting with you Sorcerer scum.”

The Captain snorted, making way for Ranma. “You insisted on being here. What are your questions for the Riverfolk?”

“Question? Ah, well, I guess I just want to know why they wanted to kill me,” said Ranma. “I mean, really, go after the guy in shackles? Grudge much?”

“You work with Sorcerers, you deserve to die,” said the archer. “It’s that simple. What are you using her for, Sorcerer? What part does she play in the end of your time in hiding? You think my people won’t find out how she fits into your plan?”

Ranma smirked to himself. This archer was really laying it on thick. It showed that he was smart enough to help Ranma sell his position with the Sorcerers, so Ranma decided it was time to try something a little more involved. “Have you seen the Guide and his daughter? I sent the two of them back to Yushu. Don’t suppose any of your scouting parties saw the two of them?”

“They did, actually,” said the archer. “It took the Guide three days to make it to the city. We didn’t make contact with them—it wasn’t our concern—but we keep an eye on everything that happens in the basin around the spring ground.”

Wuya turned to Ranma. “What happens when this Guide makes it to the city?”

“Beats me,” said Ranma. “I just told him and Plum to wait. If they aren’t around here now, who knows? I just thought if they’d stayed here after all, they could help me find a spring I’d been looking for. Don’t tell me you thought I was trying to help you defeat the Phoenix people.”

Scowling, the Captain barked some orders at her men in Chinese, and a contingent of four Guardsmen stood watch by the Amazons’ cell while Wuya dragged Ranma back toward the surface, and Ranma didn’t mind that in the slightest. He’d found out something useful after all: that he had some clever Amazons for friends and that it was the Guide who called them in, for only that way could they know there were _three_ people in that party—the Guide, Plum, and Kunō. The archer had picked up perfectly on the subtle flaw in his story and played on it beyond all expectations. As long as the priests didn’t get any information from their prisoners, Ranma would be in good shape.

After the interrogation, Ranma set out to kill time until nightfall. Ultimately, he wanted to meet with those Amazons and try to come up with some sort of plan. Even three people against the Sorcerers would do better than just him alone, but to get together with them would surely be an irreversible step. He would get no better opportunity. He should be prepared for it.

To that end, he poked his head into the Guard’s exercise session that was held in the late afternoon. Following up on what he’d learned from Henna, Ranma encouraged the Guard to practice ice-based techniques, claiming that they would do wonders against the Phoenix people and their wings. He hesitated to give the Sorcerers a real advantage—it _could_ actually prove effective, after all—but it seemed like the best option to give him an edge. Indeed, based on the Guard’s proficiency with forming ice walls and weapons out of the stuff, Ranma felt he had a lot to go off of indeed. Though Captain Wuya was naturally wary of giving Ranma any clue how to use their magic, he’d managed to needle out of her something to build off of Henna’s advice:

“What these men must understand,” Wuya had said, “is that to wield a specific form of magic, they must shut out all other influences. Some people associate fire with anger, and anger is an easy emotion to keep in mind during battle. Ice, on the other hand, can be more difficult because it’s more subtle. The best I can tell them is to understand what is in their hearts and let those feelings fade away.”

With that in mind, Ranma made some private time later on, sitting on a ledge that overlooked the springs to focus and meditate. Something he wanted to force out of his heart? That was easy. When he fought Saffron over that mountain, with Akane’s life ticking away by the second, he knew fear. He knew desperation, and it drove him to rage. He’d killed that arrogant, sneering bird-man, and as he imagined the corpse falling to Earth, he had to wonder—would he know restraint if he met that man again? If he heard Saffron’s cackling and laughter, taunting Ranma for his foolishness and threatening Akane’s life?

Probably not. He would kill that bastard again and again, and to stare into his own heart and see that darkness unsettled him. What would his mother think of that impulse? Or Akane—had she seen through him to glimpse that damned spot that wouldn’t wash out from his soul?

These were the doubts that plagued him, and he scorned himself for even having them. That was not the kind of man he was, but he dealt with those doubts. He confronted them. He bottled them up and forced them away. He made his insides cold, and the world responded to his influence. Ice materialized in his hands, forming a cold, sharp spear. Ranma wasn’t one to rely on weapons, preferring to be equally good with his bare hands as any stick, club, or sword, but in countering the Sorcerers’ staff attacks, this could do quite nicely.

But would it bring him victory over these Sorcerers? There was only one way to find out. He tapped the spear on the ground, and it cracked and shattered at the slightest touch.

_Dammit._

With that failure, Ranma decided to turn to another option. Doing something wrong with these magics could easily play with his mind ( _Or turn me into a burn victim with robotic limbs who has to wear a black helmet to breathe,_ thought Ranma), so he pursued the only other thing that might help him turn the tables on the Sorcerers: the cure to his curse. Being a man again would give him increased reach, durability, power, and speed, never mind that it would preserve his dignity once and for all.

The only problem was that, of the thousand springs, Ranma had absolutely no idea which spring would cure him. How bittersweet it was, to be in that place he’d sought out yet powerless to get what he wanted without a map to show him around or a Guide to point the way. Still, Ranma pursued his cure with all due effort. He went to the edge of the woods around Jusenkyō and drew upon his vast traveling experience to capture animals—squirrels, birds, snakes, and rats. He tossed these beasts into the pools around Jusenkyō, hoping he’d get lucky and find the Drowned Man spring all on his own, but he knew it was a longshot, and maybe the distraction was just better than doing nothing at all. To his disappointment, he found Springs of Drowned Horse, Drowned Alligator, Drowned Two-Headed Hippopotamus with Heat-beam Eyes (Ranma drained three or four pools just trying to put up enough steam between him and this creature to protect himself), but none of them led him to the Spring of Drowned Man. The most interesting result of the whole affair was seeing Sindoor’s priests following him into the woods, collecting animals and caging them, too. When Ranma tossed a critter into a pool, the priests watched from afar and jotted down notes on their scrolls. What they could find so interesting Ranma wouldn’t guess, and he hoped he’d be well beyond the Sorcerers’ grasp before he had a chance to find out.

  


As dusk loomed, Ranma headed for shelter. The safest place to keep him, it seemed, was in the den of the Sorcerer Guard themselves. While the Sorcerers used some tunnels as they were extant, Captain Wuya didn’t trust the whole tunnel system. “All these passages are connected to the springs’ water supply,” she’d observed. “That can be a fitting place to keep prisoners, but I won’t expose my people to the chance of contamination.”

Ranma couldn’t blame her for that, but it complicated his efforts severely. Old and ancient tunnels had secrets—turns and side-passages that no one knew of—but what the Sorcerers designed themselves would have fewer weaknesses.

A group of four Sorcerers escorted Ranma underground, and already, Ranma didn’t like what he saw: the first room was a barracks-like open space with no privacy. Sorcerers on both sides lined up on mats to sleep. Ranma was shunted off to the middle of the wide-open room, and the four guards stood with him as he was shown an empty straw mat.

“You’re kidding,” said Ranma. “Are you guys gonna watch me sleep all night?”

The stoic Sorcerer Guardsmen said nothing, which Ranma took to be a yes. With Sorcerers all over the place, Ranma was hard-pressed to think of a plan that would get him out of that bunker during the night. Wuya had put together a smart plan to keep him caged up, at least while he could be surrounded with so many men.

But in the daytime, that would be another story. The Guard would go outside and continue preparing themselves for the assault on Mount Phoenix. Ranma would be given enough freedom to join them and give Wuya tips and advice on how to beat the Phoenix people. While Wuya’s plan could shut him down for an evening, Ranma might be able to make a move during the day.

Yet one big question remained: what would he do then? Say he took down his Sorcerer escort—he was reasonably confident of that, if he could isolate them from other Sorcerers—where would he go? What would he do? Could he search the whole mountain for the channelers? Doubtless there would be guards wherever they were kept. Could he reasonably take them head-on and escape? Perhaps. But he’d been through that before. The channelers were powerful in their own right, enough to slow down any attack.

So as night began to fall with Ranma wide awake and clueless as to how to proceed, he watched the torches in the underground barracks flicker and waver. The Sorcerers were still trying to get settled, placing mats for their comrades to sleep on, bringing food and water into the bunker for protection from the elements, along with other miscellaneous supplies. Maybe Ranma could make a run at their grain. If he could damage their food stores, that would slow down the attack plans pretty dramatically. It would buy some time for him to think of something, but the odds that he could pull that off without getting caught were slim. He needed something more definite.

There were other items the Sorcerers brought into the mountain as well. Amazon weapons—bows, knives, and maces—were walked down the central aisle of the barracks to parts unknown. That made sense. It was better to hold on to your enemies’ weapons rather than leave them behind to be picked up and used again. Floating pallets of Amazon backpacks and clothes went past, and Ranma paid them no mind, but something shiny and metallic caught his eye. It had straps like a backpack, but it was made of sturdier stuff, with a rounded wire attacked to its top and a phone handset secured to its side.

_A radio?_

The Amazons didn’t strike him as the kind to have developed their own radios, but maybe they borrowed one from somewhere. They did have newspapers, after all. Somewhere in the annals of their periodicals there was a story about Ranma and Shampoo’s happy “married life” in Japan that was a travesty of journalism at best. A radio could be used to call for help, and Ranma surely needed that. If the Amazons weren’t interested in helping a foreign boy in their lands, they might lift a few fingers to rescue their people who’d been captured by Sorcerers.

With that, Ranma slept lightly, for his mind was already racing with possibilities.

  


He made his move at dawn. The barracks came to life and began to thin out, and Ranma was quick to do the same. “Hey,” he told his escort, “I think I’d like to go out and stretch my legs. Busy day today, right?”

The request drew no suspicion, and Ranma led the way back into faint daylight to a ledge outside the bunker’s mouth. Far below were the thousand springs of Jusenkyō, the pools still and quiet as the sun started poking over the horizon. Closer, however, was the crater where the Guide’s house had once been, where the Phoenix and Dragon Taps lay exposed to the elements.

Ranma studied his Sorcerer escort. Two of the guards stayed close to him, shadowing his every move. Two stayed further back—a sensible strategy, so all four of them couldn’t be disabled in one go even if Ranma turned on them. Ranma inched toward the ledge, eyeing the drop. They wouldn’t let him get much further from the main camp, and without that distance, it would be hard to go unnoticed.

But it was still only dawn, and the low light could work to his advantage. The Sorcerers may have had the radio, but Ranma needed to communicate with the Amazons. Only two people at Jusenkyō could do that for him, and their prison was straight down.

“Hey,” he said, turning to one of the Sorcerers. “Do you see something down there?”

“No,” said the Sorcerer.

“Are you sure? Don’t want to take a look? I think I see movement.”

The Sorcerer held fast, pointing his staff at Ranma warily.

 _Everybody thinks they’re so smart. Well, did you see this coming?_ Ranma grabbed at the point and flipped the Sorcerer overhead, sending him hurtling down the slope of the ledge.

“I think I see movement now!” cried Ranma. “How about you?”

The other three Sorcerers charged at Ranma, but he jumped off the ledge feet-first, skidding down the steep slope. Ranma expected the Sorcerers to come after him, and indeed, two came flying overhead in pursuit. The third, however, stayed on the ledge to channel magic that—

WHAM! The rock face exploded beneath Ranma, and a pillar-like piece of rock jutted out suddenly, knocking him off his feet. Ranma tumbled out of control, hitting his head and knees on the mountainside, but one good push off, and Ranma gained some elevation, enough to contort his body back into a controlled roll.

He looked up. Where were they? Were they still chasing him? Did they—

TISS! His skin hissed and burned; a bright light bored through his eyelids and set his nerves aflame. Ranma shielded his eyes with his hands and spotted a bright spot in the sky surrounded by shadow—the shadow of a Sorcerer holding his staff.

Ranma climbed to his feet and ran under the ledge, fleeing the light, and made his way into the source of Jusenkyō itself, where the Amazon prisoners lay. 

The path back to the Amazons’ cells wasn’t difficult—a turn here, a turn there. What concerned Ranma more were the guards. With the possibility of Sorcerers right behind him, Ranma couldn’t afford to wait and size up the situation. Still, he tried to quiet his aura and his breathing as best he could, just to get an idea of what he might be facing.

The standing watch for the prisoners was somewhat thin. Four Sorcerers stood guard—one at each end of the corridor, two right in front of the Amazons. Hearing nothing behind him, Ranma opted for a subtle approach. He crept up on one of the end guards, swiped a dosed bamboo needle, and stuck him in the neck, catching the man’s weight as he fell so no one would hear a sound.

The female guard on the other end of the corridor was more careful, but at least as a woman she was easier to take down through physical means. He lunched at her waist, grabbed both legs, and forced her to the floor. The woman closed her hands around his neck, trying to choke him, and a flare of heat from her hands burned his skin, but Ranma slugged her and slammed her head against the floor, knocking her out cold. He came up cradling his neck, feeling the tender flesh there.

 _Damn I hate these guys,_ he thought, wincing.

His takedown of the second guard hadn’t been as clean as he’d hoped. The guards by the Amazons’ cell stirred, with one of them coming down the hall to investigate.

_Time to see what this magic can do._

Calming himself, Ranma stormed down the corridor to meet his foe. He embraced the rush of adrenaline but didn’t let it control him, for all he wanted was to dull the pain of his burns. Everything else he might feel he was numb to. If magic could help him, that was the time for it. He shut all other influences out, and a spear of ice formed in his hands, coming to a deadly point.

 _Now I could get to like this._ Eagerly, Ranma lunged and thrust with the spear, but an opposing Sorcerer hit the shaft in the middle with his staff, shattering the ice into pieces in one overhead blow.

“And you people swear by magic, huh?” said Ranma. “Useless. Well, let’s do it the old-fashioned way!”

WHAM! He decked the Sorcerer, slugging him in the cheek, and the man staggered, crumpling like a paper cup underfoot.

_Just one more._

ZAP-ZAP-ZAP! Lightning shot through Ranma’s body; his muscles spasmed, and his eyes shut reflexively against the brightness. He reached out for a handhold against the wall, and with his arm shielding him from the light, he tried to look down the corridor.

 _One last guy, and I can’t even see him,_ he thought, struggling. _Hell, I can hardly move. Dammit!_

He tried to fight through the pain, but his muscles spasmed, and the incessant crackling of lightning in his ears was difficult to keep out. The shield bought him a momentary respite; that was all. The last Sorcerer cranked up the energy of his lightning, forcing Ranma back off his feet with a powerful pulse.

CLANK!

Until the Amazon archer kicked off the metal grating of his cell and smashed it—and the Sorcerer Guardsman—into the opposing wall.

“Uhh,” groaned Ranma, climbing to his feet. “Thank the gods for competent people in this world!”

The two Amazons trotted down the hall, taking up discarded Sorcerer staves for lack of anything else. “You’re as impressive as you were a year ago,” said the archer. “Thank you for freeing us.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” said Ranma. “We’re not out of here by a longshot. Either of you know how to work a radio?”

“Yes, both of us,” said the archer. “Why do you ask?”

“If we ain’t getting out of here right now, I want to make damn sure the Sorcerers don’t find staying here all that hospitable either. Come on!”

The Amazon archer and warrior, boy and girl, trotted together behind Ranma back toward the tunnel exit, just outside the Phoenix and Dragon, but the way wasn’t completely clear. Two more Sorcerers rushed into the breach to oppose them, one wielding that blinding light from his staff, the other pinching off the passageway with protrusions of rock to slow Ranma and the Amazons down.

“Stay back!” said Ranma, throwing an arm out to stop the Amazons. “That light will give you a sunburn if you aren’t careful, so—hey!”

But the warrior girl wouldn’t listen. She charged straight ahead, turning her face away from the light to keep its blinding glare out of her eyes. Though she wielded an unfamiliar weapon, she twirled and thrust the Sorcerer staff with deadly technique. By feel alone, she dodged the rocky protrusions that threatened to seal off the tunnel altogether, leaping past them with the dexterity of a gymnast on a balance beam. With a flick of her wrist, she swatted away the glowing staff of one of the Sorcerers, and the burning light from the staff-tip ceased. She planted her staff into the ground and used it as leverage for a two-footed kick, sending the other Sorcerer headlong into one of the jutting pillars of rock that had made the tunnel so impassable.

“If only she could listen as well as she fights,” mused Ranma, coming out from a corner.

“You’ll have to forgive Marula,” said the Amazon archer. “She’s trained hard to place third in the annual tournament and to master both aerial and ground-based fighting styles, but her interests are quite narrow. I’ve been trying to get her to change that, but she’s too stubborn to put her mind to other things. Knowledge of other cultures, including the Japanese, isn’t part of her skills.”

Ranma nodded in understanding. “In other words, she may be the first Chinese native I’ve met this week who _doesn’t_ speak Japanese.”

“Kumkum!”

The archer shuddered, and he went to the warrior girl’s side as she took down the two Sorcerers and stripped them of their possessions. Paralytic needles, knives, battle staves—Marula took them all in a heartbeat. Perhaps she had a little too much experience stripping down defeated foes for their belongings. Either way, Kumkum—as Ranma realized he must be named—took all these weapons eagerly, obedient to Marula’s command.

And when his arms were full, Marula pinched him on the ear and left with a stern look on her face.

“What was that for?” asked Ranma.

“Marula may not understand Japanese,” said Kumkum, “but she knows when I call her _stubborn_ , in any language.”

At that, Ranma could nod knowingly. He could definitely commiserate with that.

Ranma and Kumkum followed Marula to the mouth of the tunnel, but the female Amazon held up a hand, telling them to wait. She poked her head out briefly, looking to the sky with concern.

“What is it?” asked Ranma.

Marula looked back, pointed the Sorcerer staff to the sky, and said something in Chinese.

“The Sorcerers are starting to patrol the air,” said Kumkum. “It seems unlikely all three of us will be able to escape without being spotted. Do you know where our radio pack is?”

“Back up the slope.” Ranma trotted out to the tunnel mouth next to Marula and looked for himself. Sure enough, flying Sorcerers dotted the dawn sky like birds of prey waiting to strike. They wouldn’t get out of there easily. “We need a distraction,” he concluded.

“What are you suggesting?” asked Kumkum.

“Me?” Ranma scoffed. “I ain’t suggesting anything. You want _me_ to be the distraction?”

“It’s your idea, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going out there and making myself a target! You go be a distraction!”

Kumkum sighed. “I see tales of your heroism aren’t understated after all.”

“I’m a hero? Since when?”

“My point exactly.” Kumkum grabbed a Sorcerer staff with both hands and moved for the tunnel mouth, but Marula pressed a hand to his chest, stopping him. She said a few words in Chinese, which Ranma didn’t follow.

“What’s the deal?” asked Ranma.

Kumkum looked to Marula and shook his head. “She’s—she’s saying she’ll go herself. She can’t understand you, so it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’ll work the radio while you relay what information you’ve gathered from the Sorcerers.” He pursed his lips and nodded hesitantly. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Marula touched a hand to Kumkum’s and squeezed gently. That was the only goodbye between them: a small gesture of affection, followed by a mutual nod. Then, taking a deep breath, the Amazon warrior bounded into the sunlight and ran as fast as she could, leaving Ranma and Kumkum behind.

Ranma looked to Kumkum, studying the archer’s stoic gaze. “Are you and she—?”

“We’re family,” Kumkum explained. “Cousins, you could say.”

Narrowing his eyes, Ranma looked out the tunnel mouth, waiting for Sorcerers to fly by. “Is that right,” he said dryly.

“Well, my mother’s cousin married Marula’s grandfather’s youngest brother.”

“You call that family?”

“It’s a small village. Everyone’s family in some way.”

Ranma scoffed. “I don’t touch people I consider family like that.”

“I’ve heard you’re not the touching type, otherwise you and Shampoo would’ve had children by now.”

Ranma glared.

“Well…” Kumkum looked Ranma up and down. “You would have to get out of that body first.”

 _When this is all done, you and me are gonna have a long chat. Maybe with our fists. But_ after _we’ve dealt with these Sorcerer goons._

While the two of them fought this sophisticated battle of wits, Ranma and Kumkum’s chance to reach the radio finally came. A group of Sorcerers soared across the sky and down the slope of the mountain, heading in pursuit of Marula.

“I think that’s our cue,” said Ranma. “Let’s go, Kumquat.”

“It’s _Kumkum_.”

“Close enough.”

With Sorcerer forces distracted, Ranma and Kumkum clung to the sheer inner face of the crater that housed the Phoenix and Dragon. They moved slowly but with purpose, working their way around to a path through the crater wall that the Sorcerers had dug out. The way up the mountain was steep and difficult, and at times, both men had to go down on all fours to scale it, which had the benefit of keeping them low to the ground and out of sight as much as possible.

As long as the Sorcerers weren’t looking for them specifically, they had a good chance of making it back to the barracks, and indeed, the Sorcerers seemed very distracted. Marula led several Sorcerers down the slope, and given that a tornado was rapidly forming behind Ranma and near the base of the mountain, Ranma felt Marula must’ve been doing a good job.

If Marula could hold out, they’d have time to get a message through, and Ranma needed to figure out what to say and how to say it. “Okay, Kumkum, listen to me here,” said Ranma. “You’re gonna call up your people and tell them where we are—at Jusenkyō, right? The Sorcerers have some people here, and they’re protected by their magic maze thing. You said you knew about that, right?”

“We tried for years to break through it,” said Kumkum, pulling himself up a particularly steep part of the path. “No one ever came back. Do you know where they are?”

“They don’t even know where they are. If they’re lucky…” Ranma shook off the thought. “But you can stop it if you can get to the channelers. I don’t know where Wuya hid them, but they’re around here.”

Kumkum’s eyes weren’t on Ranma, however, and his attention certainly wasn’t on this information about channelers and illusions. Ranma could practically see Kumkum’s eyes following the swirling tornado below them.

“Hey,” said Ranma. “Your body’s over here; your head can’t be down there.”

Kumkum nodded grimly, looking back toward the top of the mountain. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t worry. Marula’s one of the best warriors of our year, but it’s hard not to. She promised my mother she’d bring me back home in one piece. I told her I’d do my best to bring her back alive, too.”

“Well, don’t worry about that. They like taking people alive, so they can use magic to plant visions in your head, or to make you feel things you shouldn’t feel to screw with you. So I don’t think they’ll go out of their way to kill her.”

“That’s your idea of a comfort?”

Ranma rolled his eyes. “We’re fighting with these guys; ain’t no time to be picky about what they give you.” He looked up. “This is the last ridge before we get to the bunker they dug out. Stay down.”

Kumkum nodded in acknowledgment, and Ranma led the way. Luckily, the entrance to the barracks was totally unguarded. The Sorcerers may have been powerful, but they weren’t many. Still, it would just take one to come by and ruin Ranma’s day. He wasn’t afraid of what they could do to him, or to the Amazon archer Kumkum, but a radio was a fragile piece of circuitry. One stray fireball or bolt of ki, and the machine could end up fried.

Thus, Ranma and Kumkum hurried across the open space and descended the stair into the barracks. They trotted quickly down the central corridor, past the host of empty straw mats. Ranma snatched a torch from the wall, and the two of them went further into the bunker, past store rooms of grain sacks and casks of water. At last, they found an open, square room with the confiscated Amazon equipment: Marula’s meteor hammer, a pair of bows, other weapons, and the backpack radio set. Kumkum went to the radio at once, powering it up and checking the dials.

“You know,” he said, “it would be much better if we could get back to the surface. I’m not sure what all this rock will do to reception.”

There was a sound, a shifting of a pebble or dirt underfoot. Ranma cast the torch at the darkness, seeing nothing, but he crept out of the doorway to the Amazon weapons to locate the source of the sound.

“Are you listening to me?” asked Kumkum. “I said we have to go out—”

“Shut up! Just get that radio working!”

Kumkum hunched over the radio, redoubling his efforts. Ranma stepped cautiously in the hallway, and—

THWACK! A Sorcerer staff stabbed him in the gut.

Cradling his stomach, Ranma looked both ways for his attacker, but he saw only a blur. _Great,_ thought Ranma. _Everybody’s got a gimmick, and this guy is fast._

Ranma punched and swiped at the blur, just to get whacked and stabbed all over with the heavy metal tip of a staff. He needed some way to stop this speedster, and he could think of only one way. Ranma put a hand out in front of him, calmed his mind, and focused. Pure ice formed in shield-like shape, and Ranma crouched behind it warily. He would wait for the Sorcerer to attack again, and when the shield blocked him, Ranma would burst into a counter-attack. That was, as long as the shield could hold.

The blur returned; a staff swung, and Ranma’s shield shattered. He took the brunt of the blow on his shoulder, tumbling backward. Ranma scampered to his feet and spat. “Useless again!” he cried in frustration.

Well, perhaps at what Ranma intended. The shards of ice made footing slick and slowed up the Sorcerer long enough for Ranma to see more than just an indistinct blur in low light, enough to land a solid punch.

WHAM!

The Sorcerer flew backward, tumbling into the main hall of the barracks. Ranma stalked after him to give chase, but the Sorcerer fled—this time, less of like blur and more like a man merely in fast-motion. He made for the stairs of the barracks, and Ranma weighed whether he should follow.

 _Can’t leave Kumquat alone here. Dammit._ Ranma poked his head into the supply room. “Hey, here’s the deal: stay down, don’t make too much noise, and get that damn radio working, all right? I’m gonna be out here.”

“Doing what?”

“Holding them off.”

At that, Kumkum gulped nervously and put the handset of the radio between his ear and his shoulder, trying to work the dials with both hands. Ranma threw the torch out to where the hallway met the greater barracks sleeping area, which was open and exposed. He breathed steadily, trying to keep his focus. Any minute now, the Sorcerers could come. All it would take was a sound, a change in the light.

Flickering shadows on the stairs to the outside.

The Sorcerers came down the steps two at a time, and already, Ranma felt their presence. He felt heavy and sluggish, like he stuck in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, weighed down beyond belief. He could barely move a step without feeling like he was moving a thousand-pound mass on his back. Gravity itself was fighting him, and it made him slow and nonreactive to enemy blows. A Sorcerer got his hands on Ranma, and from those points of contact, an intense heat seared Ranma’s skin.

“Agh!” Ranma cried out, and he slugged the offending Sorcerer with an icy punch to keep him at bay, even while his skin still sizzled and boiled. More Sorcerers came down the stair, bringing with them all manner of impossible magics and effects. Plants began to sprout from the floor and the walls, covering the interior of the barracks in an unnatural green hue, and their thorny tendrils grasped and clawed at Ranma, stretching his body out to render him helpless.

The Sorcerers relaxed. A set of four held their staff-points at Ranma while others continued on down the hall, looking for Ranma’s partner in crime.

“Hey, Kumquat, they’re coming!”

Whack! A staff clubbed Ranma on the back of the head for his trouble, and that was all he needed—a throbbing pain in his head and neck. He shook it off as best he could. He just needed Kumkum to buy a little time.

Thud, thud. Two pairs of arrows took down the Sorcerers in the hallway, and the others retreated for cover behind the wall.

But it was only a temporary respite. Ranma needed something to beat these goons. He needed to win. He couldn’t afford to be defeated there, to be retaken into Sorcerer hands with nothing to show for it. He _had_ to beat those people and make his way back home, or else all he’d done in coming to China would be for naught.

But thus far, the Soul of Ice had failed him. His attempts at using Sorcerer magic had been feeble and pathetic, and if he couldn’t count on that to aid him, what did have but his own strength to get him through? And that wasn’t enough. That strength had saved a girl from certain death, and yet it still wasn’t enough. He could still be selfish and vacillating. He could be cripplingly indecisive when it came to matters of the heart.

And no amount of Sorcerer magic would change that, would it.

No, it wouldn’t. As Ranma lay on the floor of the barracks, entangled in a web of vines, he realized the profound magnitude of his mistake. He’d hoped to claim his cure and, in doing so, prove his own determination and worth, but the connection between what he wanted to do and what he hoped to accomplish was tenuous at best. Even if he’d succeeded in curing himself, his deeds could fall flat and be without meaning.

He could fail.

He, Saotome Ranma, could fail.

The prospect, even just the thought, terrified him, so much so that it had driven him to recklessness and aggression. When he’d fought the Sorcerers in the rain, he beat one so badly that his own knuckles ached. When he realized the depths of the Sorcerers’ scheme, he’d tried to go after the channelers without a plan, with little more than an idea of where they were and no clue how to stop them.

And every time he’d tried to find the secret to Sorcerer magic, the hope that it might lead him to salvation and freedom had simmered under the surface of his thoughts. That hope only masked his fear of failure, and both worked against him. They kept his mind frothing and unstable—hardly the cool and even-tempered state of thinking necessary to find the Soul of Ice in his heart.

But he could fail. He could definitely fail, and the only way that fear wouldn’t hold him back was if he could convince himself, however flimsily, that he no longer cared. No one had the right to judge him but he himself. He extinguished all desperate hope within his heart. There was only what he felt he could do—what he would do—and how that helped or hurt him he wouldn’t worry about. He couldn’t afford to.

 _All I can do is accept it,_ he thought. _I’m gonna make myself cold and not care one way or the other. It is what it is, and there ain’t nobody who can touch me or make me change my mind._

With that resolution in mind, Ranma felt himself settle into a more familiar state—it was like the Soul of Ice, but colder, and he felt the chill all over his body. He thought only of the cold, and it came to him. It grew over his hands and legs. It encased the vines that had entangled him, and it was with mere curiosity, rather than boldness, that Ranma grabbed on the frozen vines and pulled.

Crack. The vines shattered, and Ranma broke free.

There was a shout in Chinese; Sorcerers turned their staves on Ranma, but he bolted past them, making for the room where Kumkum worked on the radio. He slipped inside, and when the Sorcerers came after him, Ranma raised his hands to the empty doorway and shut his eyes. They were coming after him, like invaders to his very soul, and he would do his best to shut them out and keep his cold heart pure.

Shink! A wall of ice formed over the doorway, and a pair of Sorcerers slammed into it headlong. They eyed the wall of ice in surprise and horror, chattering between themselves and to their comrades, and the whole group backed away, as if they’d seen a ghost.

“I don’t think they expected that,” said Ranma, allowing himself a slight smirk. He peered over his shoulder at the Amazon archer. “How’s it coming, Kumquat?”

Kumkum shoved his own bow aside and went to the back of the radio set. “It blew a fuse. I’m trying to fix it.”

“Can ya fix it faster, maybe?” Ranma nodded his head toward the ice wall. “I’m kinda out in the cold here.”

“Do I look like a Chinese electrician to you?”

Ranma opened his mouth to answer, but there was a commotion outside. The Sorcerer Guard made way for someone entering the hallway, and that person walked up to Ranma’s ice wall with a stern look on her face, her reddish-brown hair disheveled in the early morning.

“Nice to see you, too, Captain,” said Ranma. “You look a little tired.”

“What sorcery is this?” Wuya demanded, touching a finger to the ice wall.

“Well, I think it’s _your_ sorcery. I’m just borrowing it. It’s kinda what I do. There ain’t a technique in the world that I can’t figure out and pull of.”

“Don’t play games with us, Outsider. Surrender yourself and the Riverfolk man now. We have his companion. You don’t want to make us harm her to ensure your cooperation.”

Kumkum closed a panel on the radio and stared. “They have Marula? They captured her?”

“It’s a bluff,” said Ranma. “Don’t listen to her.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do! Because I know you have to put that kind of thing out of your mind, Kumquat. You can’t care about that, about her, right this second. There’s something you have to do. She can wait. She has to wait, or we’re all damned. You got me?”

Hesitantly, Kumkum turned the radio’s front back toward him, and he held the handset to his ear as he adjusted some dials.

“Besides,” said Ranma, looking back to the Captain. “I know this bitch. She likes to be straight up. Torturing people for the sake of evil isn’t her style. She’ll grill you if she wants something from you, but that’s it. If you ask me, kinda makes her weak and bad at her job.”

Wuya narrowed her eyes, but she said nothing to oppose Ranma and walked out of sight down the corridor instead.

“Yeah, that’s right!” Ranma called out as loud as he could. “Just walk away. You can’t do nothing to get at me, or to help your friend Tilaka like this. I know your magic; even a dozen of you can’t get rid of me so easily!”

KA-PAM! A hole blew open in the wall to Ranma’s right, and Wuya stepped in bearing an intense glare.

“Okay,” said Ranma, leaving the ice wall to stand and melt. “I admit, I didn’t think of that.”

Kumkum looked up from his sitting position. He was helpless; his bow was too far to get his hands on, so he did the only thing he could: he kept talking, explaining, transmitting for someone to hear. A golden ball of shimmering ki formed in the Captain’s hand. She cocked it back to hurl at Kumkum, and—

WHAM! Ranma decked her with a heavy punch, his fist covered in a block of ice. The Captain stumbled and fell into the breach, totally stunned.

“Keep talking, Kumquat!” cried Ranma. “Keep talking until you can’t speak, you got me?”

Kumkum nodded, and he jabbered away on the radio faster than ever. Ranma bounded into the gap in the wall that Wuya had made, and with his heavy ice punches, he fended off a whole gaggle of Sorcerers that tried to rush in. They tried using heavy gravity to weigh him down, but they caught their own comrades in the gravity field and made the breach an obstacle for both sides. Vines grew on the walls and grabbed at Ranma, but they just as often found Sorcerer arms and legs instead.

“Enough!” cried Wuya, climbing to her feet. She took her staff in both hands, held it straight upright, and with crackling ki energy, she slammed the tip into the floor.

TIK-KOW! A deafening shockwave obliterated the walls of the room. It sent Ranma flying into the corridor, into the mass of Sorcerers who’d been unable to get past him. The radio lay in pieces, and Kumkum was prone among the broken circuits, screws, and knobs.

Sorcerers grabbed at Ranma’s arms, and he didn’t resist. He only looked to Kumkum, who was taken into custody, too.

“Did you reach them?” Ranma demanded. “Did you get through?”

Kumkum looked to Ranma with a dazed, confused expression, but after a couple blinks, he responded with a definite nod.

The Amazons had heard them, and they would come for Jusenkyō.

And though Ranma had fallen to the Sorcerers that day, he knew something firmly in his heart: when Amazon and Sorcerer met on the grounds of the thousand springs, he would find a way to escape in that battle. He would absolutely be freed.


	4. The Matriarch's Burden

There are many theories of what constitutes beauty. From stiletto heels and foot binding to massive ear piercings as big as a man’s fist, human beings have always strived for some abstract aesthetic or ideal, bizarre and painful though those goals may be. Despite the superficial differences, there are some common elements: cleanliness denotes hygiene, and smooth skin is a testament to youth. Even children become preoccupied with these ideas, imitating their elders when the occasion calls for it.

Thus, it was nothing too out of the ordinary when a girl no older than sixteen rubbed a white cream into her cheeks. The balm had a fresh, soothing scent, and she sniffed at it from a bowl made of light brown wood. She sat half in sunlight, half in shade from an animal hide tent, and her long, dark hair carried a fine sheen. Her clothes were far too extravagant for hiking in the wilderness, for she wore a regal silken robe, purple in color, that she continually smoothed out where the fabric bunched up to keep it pristine.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” That voice belonged to an older woman, who watched over the girl with a dutiful eye. She wore a gray cloak with a hood and carried with her a simple wooden spear for protection, but her lips were always curled into a knowing smile. “I’m sure his eyes won’t be on the wrinkles in the fabric.”

The girl didn’t react to this comment. She held up a small mirror in her free hand, cradling the bowl between her legs, and watched her own reflection as she rubbed in the balm.

“Be careful with that,” said the old woman with the spear. “It can leave you feeling ill if you use too much. It’s understandable if you’re nervous, though.”

The girl put the bowl aside, rubbing in the remainder she had on her fingertips. “I’m well prepared for this duty, Elder Surma.”

“I won’t say you aren’t. Still, there’s not one girl I know in the Tribe who wouldn’t be anxious over what’s to happen here. It’s not every day that Amazons and Sorcerers meet, and with promises of peace at that!” Elder Surma pursed her lips, and she took down her hood, revealing sharp green eyes and a bun of dark and gray hair. Despite her wrinkles, there was nothing about her gaze that wasn’t keen. “In truth, I wish Teacher had asked for more support. I mean, really, just you, me, and her against two young, fit men?”

“Grandmother regularly trounces anyone who challenges her,” said the girl.

“Well, yes, but it’s different when you have people to protect.”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t even been hunting since Grandmother arranged this.”

Elder Surma smiled in sympathy. “This is a more difficult task than any battle, where the rush of victory or the pain of defeat comes quickly and abates. You’ll have to endure whatever comes for you, but I’m confident you have the strength to persevere. Teacher feels the same way, or else she wouldn’t have recommended you for this task. To think, after decades of feuding, there can be peace between our peoples. That is something a thousand warriors can’t accomplish by themselves.”

And it was something she _could_ accomplish only by forfeiting the rest of her life—and her body—to see that the deed was done.

There was a rustling in the trees, and Elder Surma tightened her grip on her spear. “Get ready,” she said. “I think they’re here.”

Putting the bowl of balm aside, the girl rose from her tent. Sure enough, a man cut through the woods. Clad in black with a sleeveless tunic, he was broad-shouldered and strong. His sideburns came halfway down his cheek, but he kept the rest of his face clean-shaven. A giant greatsword clanked against his thigh. His gait spoke to the girl of power and determination, but when he approached the Elder and the girl, he was respectful and bowed once to each of them.

“Forgive me for our lateness,” he said, “I’m—”

“Prince Yi,” said the girl, stepping forward. “I am Ceruse. I will be your wife.”

“What?” The man gaped for a moment, shaking his head. “Oh, no, you don’t understand. I’m Bailu. My brother’s back at our camp. He thought it best not to put you ill at ease by us both coming, and the Second Speaker agreed, though it took half the night of negotiating with her just to get that far.”

“She can be stubborn—that much is certain,” said Elder Surma. “And eager to make decisions on behalf of others, at that. Well, that’s Teacher for you. I hope she didn’t prove too much of a bother before you came, Prince Captain.”

“Not at all. I think I would like to learn from her, but that’s a topic for another time. If it’s agreeable to you both, I can escort you to my brother’s camp and the Second Speaker. I know the circumstances of this arrangement are awkward, but we hope to make the process as painless as possible.”

“Will you always be seeing to Ceruse’s safety, Prince Captain?” asked Surma.

Bailu laughed nervously at that. “Well, I can think of few other duties more worthy of my attention than seeing that my brother’s wife is safe and secure.”

Ceruse’s brow wrinkled, but she took a slow, even breath, and said nothing.

“Forgive me, Princess,” said Bailu. “I know this must be a troubling arrangement. To tell the truth, I don’t approve of it. As good a cause this is, I would rather the leaders of both our tribes find peace through negotiations in words, not flesh.”

The girl’s gaze softened somewhat. “You’re kind to say that, but this is my duty, Prince Captain, the same as yours. And I’m not a princess yet.”

“Forgive me again, then. I shouldn’t call my sister-in-law by name, and whether you are a princess yet or not, you have the beauty of one even now.”

“What a charmer you are!” cried Elder Surma, stifling a laugh. “Perhaps you have some kind words for me, too? I promise you, Prince Captain, I’m not a day over sixty-five!”

Bailu stared at Surma in horror for a moment, drawing a smile from her and, for the first time that day, from Ceruse, too. With lively conversation to sustain them, the party moved through the sparse wood toward the Sorcerer camp. Sure enough, Prince Yi was waiting for them there—a stoic, stiff man with a goatee and dark eyes—and beside him stood the Amazon who’d come to help negotiate the final arrangements. She was short, wearing a gray cloak like Surma but without a hood, and she carried a walking stick with her always, though she hardly needed it. She walked up to Ceruse and looked the girl in the eye.

“Well, my granddaughter,” said Cologne, “what do you think of your new husband?”

Ceruse looked between Yi and Bailu for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “I’m sure we will be happy together,” she said, and she went forward with a firm step.

Rip.

Only to snag her dress on a tree root, leaving a patch of cloth behind.

“My, my, whatever will we do with you,” Cologne chided her, picking up the square of torn fabric. She pocketed the piece and moved on, however, confident that it was no ill sign or omen.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  


Over two decades later, Cologne had the benefit of hindsight—as well as that ripped patch of Ceruse’s dress to remember the past by. Her gambit to bring peace to both Amazons and Sorcerers alike had long since failed, bringing war to the Tibetan Plateau. Those were old, raw memories, ones she preferred to keep buried, but that was difficult to do, considering the telegram she held in her hand.

“Teacher,” it began, “Saotome Ranma and one of our scouting parties have been taken. The Tribe ready for war, and Shampoo’s husband lies at the center of it. Come quickly. I know you will. Your student, Surma.”

Thank goodness for devoted students. A woman couldn’t live past a hundred years without making a few allies in those she’d trained and taught. Surma was one of those allies. Indeed, after the debacle of Cologne’s peace plan, Surma may well have been her only ally in the Tribe.

But thanks to allies, Cologne had a clear and easy path home. Traversing half of China was never an easy task, but for decades, the small Amazon village had leveraged centuries of martial-arts know-how into a working relationship with the People’s Liberation Army. At the low, low cost of training fanatical Chinese reds every six months, the Amazons enjoyed unencumbered travel to and from their village to the outside world, as well as the Chairman’s word that they wouldn’t be brutally annihilated as an affront to the Communist Party’s dominance over all Chinese lands.

Cologne rolled her eyes at just the thought of that agreement. _You deal with a devil for too long, and you shouldn’t be surprised if you end up singed. Or utterly incinerated._

But tribal politics had long since stopped being her concern, inasmuch as she could do little to change it. Her usual attire of green and red robes with a golden circle on the chest made her look stately and dignified, but they carried no implication of power with them. Thus, she headed home as a common woman on the benches of a PLA troop helicopter. The thundering noise of the rotors she’d long since tuned out, hearing the words on the telegram much more clearly in Surma’s smooth and measured voice. This preoccupation made the journey bearable, and her traveling companions were much the same way. After nearly eighteen hours of travel by plane and chopper, Mousse donned a pair of thick red earmuffs and sat back, trying to sleep. Shampoo, on the other hand, stared past the cargo nets, gazing through the windows.

At those moments, it was hard for Cologne to tell Shampoo apart from the sixteen-year-old version of her aunt, Ceruse. Those distant stares told Cologne little. Surely it was just nostalgia for home, uncertainty about how she’d be received in returning to the village without Ranma.

“Nothing can be done about that now,” Cologne had assured her. “With our people focused on the Sorcerers, no one outside our family will know—or care about—whether you’ve won Ranma by now.”

But that had done little to assuage Shampoo’s disquiet, and clearly, the girl had done something wrong, something with consequences she feared. If not, why would she continually rub at an old bruise on her wrist, even when the dark spot had long since healed?

Perhaps she had a hand in why Ranma left so suddenly. It wasn’t the first time the thought came to Cologne, and before, she’d dismissed it because it was irrelevant. Ranma had run off with that Kunō boy—an idiot’s idiot if there ever was one, being used solely to get back to China and claim Ranma’s cure. That would be good for Shampoo, so why should Cologne question it? That had been Cologne’s thinking at the time. Perhaps she had left too much in Shampoo’s hands.

Midway through the afternoon in the Tibetan Plateau, it felt like late evening to the jet-lagged Amazons, and with this weariness in their minds, the three of them trudged from the helicopter landing site two kilometers to the Amazon village. They were hardly halfway there before they ran into fellow countrymen: a hunting party on patrol, rife with archers and crossbowmen, who whistled from the brush and let out a cheer.

“For Speaker Cologne!” cried the party leader. “For the Tribe! Let the Sorcerers hear our voices and tremble!”

“Ah-ooh!” shouted the party. “Ah-ooh!”

“Please,” Cologne called back, “I haven’t been Speaker for twenty years now. You serve the Tribe, as we all do.”

“Ah-ooh!” the hunting party shouted again, and as they headed back into the brush, Cologne allowed herself the pleasure of a slight smile. She could certainly think of worse fates for an old woman, and it wouldn’t be the first time passers-by gave their regards.

But to her dismay, the vicinity around the village was crawling with patrols and hunting parties, all of them ready for battle should it come to them, and that was just a sign of what the Tribe had planned. In the outskirts of the village, the people of the Tribe came together to work on a common cause. They felled trees and burned hot fires to smelt metal, toiling in droves.

“What’s this?” said Mousse, squinting. “Are we building one of those machines, like where a ball moves a lever, which opens a door, which overturns a funnel to—”

Cologne jabbed Mousse on the kneecap with her walking stick. “Glasses, Duck Boy! These are not contraptions for childish amusement. Our people prepare for war.”

Wincing, Mousse relented, pulling his glasses from his shirt pocket. He studied the vast collection of wagons, arrow launchers, and other great siege weapons and frowned. “With this much firepower, you’d think we were ready to march on the waterfall! Isn’t this a bit much for a simple rescue?”

That Cologne couldn’t say for sure. Even with dozens of men shaping shafts and forging arrowheads, a tribe couldn’t go to war inside of a few days. Still, the scale of this effort troubled her. It was late March, yes, and the most of the fields for farming were not yet ready to be seeded, but to see plots of land half-plowed, as if the farmers had abruptly put down their tools to make armor and weapons instead—had the sentiments in the village turned so quickly? Just two weeks before, people had largely forgotten the Sorcerers existed. How easily old wounds could be reopened. Cologne hadn’t forgotten, even when others had.

Still, Cologne marveled at the effort. “It seems we will take our people back from those fools in short order after all.”

“Alas,” said a voice, “I wish I could be so sure of that.”

Shampoo reached for one of the maces that were strapped to her back, but a wave of a hand from Cologne put her at ease. The person who approached them was no stranger—at least, not to Cologne. Twenty years had put a few more gray hairs on Surma, Cologne’s one-time student, but she was as steady and sure of herself as ever. A gray, hoodless cloak marked her status the way Cologne’s had two decades before.

“Speaker, good day,” said Shampoo, nodding in respect.

“Good day indeed,” said Surma, looking lively with a plain wooden spear in hand. “Hello Shampoo, Mousse, and, of course, Teacher. I’m glad you’ve made it presently. I trust you’re all well?”

“As well as can be expected,” said Cologne. “You don’t seem to have done too ill for yourself! I think this is the first time I’ve seen you in that cloak. How long have you been Speaker now?”

“Six months, Teacher.”

“And you find it an excruciating and impotent position, I trust?”

Surma smiled to herself. “I find it a rewarding experience. I enjoy fulfilling the duties the Tribe entrust to me.”

“Really now? Eighty-six years old, and you’re still painfully idealistic! You’re running out of time to grow out of this mindset. And before you reply that you have at least as much time as until you’re my age, let’s get to business, shall we? What is the will of the Council? What have the twelve bumbling fools managed to entangle themselves in this time?”

“I would remind you _I’m_ one of those bumbling fools now,” said Surma, “but your assessment is uncomfortably close to the truth. The Council has deliberated for two days since receiving word from Kumkum at the spring ground, reaching no conclusion.”

Cologne eyed the war machines that were being built around the village. “You don’t call these a conclusion?”

“All Speaker Thanaka’s work, but Speaker Bindi is harshly opposed to the idea of war.”

“What a surprise.”

At that, Speaker Surma allowed herself a slight smile. “When the Guide to the spring ground came to us with his daughter and the Kunō boy, it was difficult enough for her to agree parties should be sent to investigate Sorcerer activity. Speaker Bindi was livid when she found out our people had engaged in a skirmish with them. As much as possible, she wishes to avoid any appearance that we are the aggressors. In her words, ‘History should not be allowed to repeat itself.’ ”

“Of course not,” said Cologne. “We should win this time. But what does the First Speaker think we should do to get our people back—ask the Sorcerers nicely?”

“In so many words, yes,” said Surma. “Speaker Bindi has pointed out repeatedly that Kumkum’s report of the Sorcerers’ goal is no inherent threat to us.”

“And what goal is that?”

“Saffron.” Surma shook her head, not pretending to understand. “Do you know why on earth that could be, Teacher?”

Cologne didn’t. Saffron was dead; there was precious little he could do to help the Sorcerers in any way. To pursue him was the definition of a meaningless chase. If they needed him for some end, Cologne couldn’t imagine what. “The boy didn’t say anything else?”

“Just that he and five others were taken, that Saotome Ranma was already in Sorcerer hands, and that the Sorcerers were going to the spring ground to stage an attack on the Phoenix, to claim Saffron. We asked what they might want with him, but the transmission cut out. If not for that, I think Speaker Thanaka would’ve compelled a war party to convene long ago, but Speaker Bindi demands that we have more information, that we show the Sorcerers diplomacy and negotiate. I fear there is no one strong enough to speak for a more measured, cautious course between them.”

“Aside from yourself, you mean.”

Surma simpered. “I’ve tried. So far, all I have been able to do is ally with the First Speaker to keep this mobilization you see from turning into indiscriminate bloodshed. We must be prepared for war, yes, but we know far too little to do any more than that, and ultimately, the deadlock in the Council keeps us from taking any firm action.”

“Let me see the vaunted First and Second Speakers,” said Cologne. “It sounds like it’s long past time since they heard from me. Shampoo’s betrothal depends on Ranma’s safe return. I will accept nothing less than that. The boy is too talented. We will save him and all our people. We can’t leave anyone in their hands again.”

“I expected as much,” said Surma, smiling wryly. “Come with me, then, Teacher. Perhaps an older voice can break this stalemate and see that something good is done.”

  


While Shampoo and Mousse returned to their homes, eager to find rest after a long day of travel, Cologne followed Surma deeper into the village to track down the other Speakers of the Council, two of the three most powerful people in the Tribe of Women Heroes. As with all power exerted over men, the positions of Speaker came with limits. In the Council of Elders sat twelve men and women, representatives of all the major families of the Tribe, but their powers were strictly delineated. When the Council invited guests to speak and make requests, nine of its members were forbidden to speak, so that they’d form no opinion beforehand nor feel compelled to defend it with their votes. Only three held the power to control the course of debate—the Three Speakers, who wielded profound influence, limited only by their inability to vote on any matter before the Council. That was the balance of power the Council struck: the Silent Nine would vote but never speak, and the Three Speakers would speak, but never vote.

So went the theory, but in practice, the Speakers’ ability to control debate kept certain uncomfortable facts from ever reaching the Nine’s ears. Even in Cologne’s day, the voting members of the Nine would all but pledge themselves to follow a preferred Speaker’s will, based on ideology or family ties. To think how much these affairs could dominate a woman’s life made Cologne feel ill. How much better had she felt teaching students again, instructing them in the ways of the Tribe’s greatest warriors, and learning from others? That was the opportunity Ranma had given her, even as an old woman: to teach and to learn and to cause a little mischief now and again.

But then, while that headstrong young man had gotten himself captured by Sorcerers, there would be little else to do but bail him out. And to do that…

“Check.” An old, hook-nosed woman, moved a disc marked in red—reading _horse_ —up two squares and over one on a stone table.

“Again?” cried her playing companion, a stout, balding man. “You’re flirting with perpetuity, First. Repeat this tactic once more, and I will be forced to claim victory.”

“Shut up and play,” said the hook-nosed woman. “No one will claim an automatic victory because I’ll have you mated in three turns.”

The man, Thanaka, fingered a disc with _elephant_ written on it in black ink. He moved the piece diagonally two points, putting it right alongside the horse.

“As expected,” said the woman, Bindi. “Nothing you do surprises me anymore.”

Thanaka huffed, slapping his knee as he sat back on a severed tree stump. “For such a devoted peace-lover, you do take a great deal of pride in this game.” 

“It keeps the mind sharp to deal with even the most ridiculous attempts at a defense.” Bindi glanced sidelong from the corner of her eye, and Cologne and Surma were there to look back, one of them decidedly unamused. The woman was the First Speaker—the irascible Bindi, who’d spent most of her life as a member of the Nine and the Three. She had been one of the Nine while Cologne was still on the Council, but already she’d been waiting in the wings to take on a Speaker’s mantle. Her ascension to First in the intervening years proved no surprise, for she absolutely had the strength of will and conviction to take on the job. When Cologne had pushed for war against the Sorcerers, Bindi was one of the few to stand up to her.

“No doubt it is admirable to send dozens or hundreds of men away to save just one of our own,” Bindi had said back then, “but it is nevertheless foolish to walk headlong into battle against a foe as powerful as we are. We have a responsibility toward their lives, too. The Sorcerers may have wronged us, but that does not justify throwing away hundreds of lives. Let us cut ties with them. Let us never deal with them again, or are we so bloodthirsty and fixated on gratification that we can do nothing but march to their doorstep with weapons brandished and dripping with blood? Believe me when I say this—if you vote to go to war, you are nothing more than a stupid fool.”

How rare it was for one of the Nine to speak so passionately, even in closed sessions of the Council, but Bindi handled herself like she’d been born for the Speaker’s role, and she didn’t hesitate to let people know it. That such a snide, arrogant woman could be so dedicated to avoiding bloodshed was a contradiction only Bindi herself could stand. Anyone with a sane mind considered it mystifying at best, irritating at worst.

Elder Bindi’s playing partner, the amiable Thanaka, was the Second Speaker, successor to the position Cologne herself had once held. Having married into one powerful family from another as a gesture of political union, Thanaka represented an alliance of two houses. Only a man could represent such diverse interests in their matriarchal society, and as such, Thanaka filled a unique role. Seldom without a smile on his face, Thanaka’s jovial attitude belied both his intelligence as well as his aggressive stance toward the Sorcerers, much as he might deny it.

“I do not seek blood for blood,” he insisted when challenged on his position. “I only wish for safety, as any man should. We cannot know what the Sorcerers intend toward us, and now they have taken our people so brazenly! To do anything other than meet their aggression with a show of force would make us look pathetic and weak. We should march on the spring ground and take our people back. Do not wait for the Sorcerers to offer us peace or concessions. Don’t tip them off with efforts to negotiate. We have the PLA to back us if things should go awry. I think we all would rather our great-great-grandchildren not have to worry if Sorcerers are going to come for them in the night. What say you, First?”

“I say nothing.” Bindi nudged another of her red pieces a point forward on the board. “Talk all you like about this matter. I will play until the game is decided.”

“Then I see I should finish it myself,” said Thanaka, sliding a piece across the central river that divided the board in half.

“I’ll enjoy seeing you try.”

Cologne tapped her walking stick on the ground. “Speakers, as entertaining as this is to watch, can we all not at least agree that a party should be sent to see to the rescue of our brothers and sisters? Offer negotiations with the Sorcerers if we must, if—” She looked to Bindi. “…if there is no other way to agree that the party should be sent at all.”

Speaker Bindi said nothing, staring at the game board.

“Come now,” Cologne chastised her, “your pride can wait for a matter importance to all our people, Bindi!”

With an irritated sigh, Bindi relented. “I could be persuaded to accept such a measure if Thanaka is not insistent on the Sorcerers’ utter annihilation.”

“My,” laughed Thanaka, “I think I just saw a goat floating off the ground, and even that wouldn’t be half as strange as what I think I just heard!”

Bindi glared. “I’m not finished. I could be persuaded to take this position, but I think Second and I would both be assured knowing that this argument of yours, Cologne, isn’t motivated by personal goals.”

Cologne rolled her eyes. “Why, Bindi, I have no idea what you mean….”

“I think even you can’t deny who this is really about.” Bindi moved one of her red pieces, capturing one of Thanaka’s. She held up the black piece for Cologne and Surma to see. It read _ma_ , the horse, written exactly the same way as the character in Ranma’s name. “Or does this request go back even further? Do you still chase ghosts, Cologne? That’s how futile this task would be. You seek the dead, and you won’t be satisfied until you have used all our bodies to help dig up the corpse. That is not the Tribe’s concern.”

“I’m afraid First is right on that point,” said Speaker Thanaka. “I certainly wouldn’t have the search for one girl who’s probably lost or dead distract from the safety of our people in the present. Twenty years ago, you chose to march right into the heart of the Sorcerer village instead of wearing them down in smaller skirmishes that we could win. And why? So you could capture their leaders and get the answers you sought? That was a painful mistake. Perhaps you’re saying the right things, Cologne, but you may not be the right person to say them.”

“And if I do?” For the first time in their conversation, Speaker Surma came forward. “I like to think that the right argument can be made regardless of who speaks it. We can all be guilty of misjudgments. Nevertheless, Cologne’s argument should be considered on its merits.”

“And it will be debated before the Council,” said Bindi. “But do not be so naÏve to think no one will take into account Cologne’s background and reputation. A person who speaks is always judged by her past associations and decisions—as you will be, Third, if you are not careful about whom you show loyalty toward.” She looked to Cologne. “You come to us offering counsel; now, I will give you some of my own. This matter does not concern you. Even your great-granddaughter’s betrothal does not change that. That boy is not family of yours yet, and unless you can prove otherwise, you have no standing to claim rights or otherwise influence this decision of the Council. The last place you should be is here. Leave me and Second here to our game. That is the best course for you.”

Cologne narrowed her eyes, watching Bindi through the tiniest of slits. “What must I do to convince you my judgment is not clouded in this matter?”

“Go away.”

A simple response, and it told Cologne all she needed to know. The Council hadn’t changed in the twenty years since she’d left it. It was full of people stuck in their ways and unwilling to really debate or change. Bindi’s concession was mere bluster, nothing more, and though Cologne surely had Surma in her corner, she would need better ammunition to break the stalemate as yet. As frustrating as it was to have her people forced to sit on their hands and wait, Cologne preferred it to the rash massacre Thanaka surely had planned. It gave her time to strategize, to think. The Council could be stubborn, but there had to be some argument capable of persuading them—or of forcing action on her terms if need be.

  


With that goal in mind, Cologne returned home. In a great house halfway under a looming ledge, four generations of her family made their home. Traditionally, the seat of family power moved from mother to eldest daughter, and husbands left their families to move in with their wives. Thus, in Cologne’s home lived her eldest daughter, and her eldest daughter’s eldest daughter would’ve lived there, too, had she not left the village instead, on Cologne’s suggestion.

Really, unless or until Ceruse came home, there could be no place for her there, just a void that others would step in to fill. Others like Shampoo’s mother, whose only daughter lived in that house, too. Eventually, Shampoo should take Ranma has her husband and raise her own family between those walls, as Cologne and two generations more had done, but all that would be on hold until Ranma could be brought back.

By the time Cologne returned, the family had organized a great feast. It was a tremendous occasion, after all, and a time of uncertainty, too, not knowing when all the family might be able to come together again. As was bound to happen at such events, Cologne’s vast and varied family divided itself into various shifting groups as people caught up with one another. Cologne’s granddaughter Gloss, a bright and intelligent woman, always drew a crowd, for she had many a tale of mishaps in her alchemical hobby, with the scale of destruction ranging from the obliteration of a simple shack to the formation of landslides. By far, however, most attention was put upon Shampoo, with much of the family demanding to know the pursuit of Ranma was going.

“We’ll be so happy when this is all over,” said Shampoo, her speech fluent and natural in their native Chinese. “Great-grandmother and I will go rescue him from those evil Sorcerers, and he’ll want to thank me, to reward me for my devotion to him. Oh, I don’t know if I can even describe it!”

That was Shampoo all right, prone to reveling in girlish fantasies at the drop of a hat. At times, Cologne had worried the girl might be too optimistic about her prospects with Ranma, thinking too far ahead about the life she’d enjoy with him before doing what was necessary to claim and win his heart, but Shampoo had that determination within her, too, and Cologne saw it. When the attention turned away from Shampoo, the girl’s enthusiasm faded, and by habit, she rubbed at her wrist once again. Had her claim been only an act? Or was it the only way she knew to respond when asked about Ranma?

Perhaps it was a little of both.

After dinner, Cologne retired to her study. Her personal library of texts on the history, law, and politics of the Tribe had long served as a source of insight and logic, of arguments that younger minds would find difficult to refute, and indeed, Cologne already had an inkling of what she was looking for. To be certain, she enlisted Shampoo to help her, ostensibly to relieve the stress reading would exact on Cologne’s old and tired eyes. Shampoo jumped at the chance.

“I would fight for Ranma with pen and paper if I must,” she said.

“Would you?” challenged Cologne.

Shampoo frowned, eyeing Cologne carefully. “Great-grandmother?”

“I saw your reaction during dinner. You made a good show of pretending that all is well, but it clearly isn’t. Tell me: have you lost the temerity to pursue Ranma? You’ve been distant ever since he left.”

“I—I worry for him,” she said quietly. “It was sudden for him to leave so quickly, but I absolutely love Ranma. I love him much, much more than anyone else. We’ll have such strong children, and I know he wants to learn from you, from all wisdom the village can offer. He’ll see in time how wonderful our life together can be.”

“Good. I see your passion for the boy hasn’t diminished. I’ve watched too many dutiful girls suppress their doubts because they thought it was responsible or respectful. Such an attitude would only destroy you.”

“Great-grandmother, I’m not Aunt Ceruse.”

That much Cologne could see. Shampoo wore her hair differently and was more athletic. Even at her most somber, the girl couldn’t capture Ceruse’s expression on that day—the day Cologne moved to give her granddaughter away. But as Shampoo said, she was not Ceruse. She didn’t feel any weight from her betrothal to Ranma, and as such, she was prepared for the tactic Cologne devised.

“Take the third scroll off that shelf over there,” said Cologne, pointing with her walking stick. “Tell me what you think of it.”

Curious, Shampoo dusted off the piece of parchment and unrolled it with both hands. She read the item aloud. “ ‘In marriage, a woman’s family shall offer at least two goats, or other goods deemed equal to them, in compensation to the man’s family for him joining his wife’s?’ ” Shampoo blinked. “Only two goats? We’d be laughed at if we gave any fewer than three.”

“Those were different times, and that’s not what I speak of. Look further down.”

Shampoo squinted. “ ‘If a member of the Tribe should be killed in battle, the body should be burned, so that all her sisters and brothers will breathe in some of her glory when her ashes are scattered. If she should die in enemy hands, be captured, or go missing in a time of war, her husband shall have unlimited power to command a party to retrieve her body or rescue her if she is still alive, and no one—not even his Elders—may interfere, and a wife shall enjoy this same power should her husband die, go missing, or be held in enemy hands instead. This power shall be known as the Last Right.’ ”

“The Tribe should never abandon its people, no matter how its leaders may prove cowardly or refuse to fight,” said Cologne. “The Last Right is a somewhat obscure piece of law, but we can use it. We can lead a party that others will join, and as long as you can assert the Last Right before the Council, they will be powerless to stop you. You’ve said you still love the boy without question. That’s a start, but you’ll have to convince them that you’re his favorite, too. I ask you as one warrior to another: do you have the strength of will for this task?”

“I do, Great-grandmother. I absolutely do. I won’t fail Ranma, no matter what.”

A bold statement Shampoo had made, and she’d have to back it up, for to convince the Council that she could claim the Last Right as Ranma’s wife, she would need more than just her word. It was no secret, not even in the Amazon village, that Shampoo had faced competition in the pursuit of Ranma. The Council would need to be convinced that Shampoo was his favorite, that she’d dealt with her rivals and overcome them.

And Cologne could think of no better way to do that than to have those rivals attest to just that. It wouldn’t be an easy task to convince them, though. Chief among Shampoo’s rivals for Ranma was Akane, who had the advantage of living in the same home as he. Shampoo hadn’t endeared herself to Akane after crashing Ranma and Akane’s wedding ceremony, necessary though it had been. Cologne expected that Akane would interpret any request from her as a plot or a ploy, particularly because the girl was prone to jumping to conclusions from the smallest morsels of information. If Akane refused Cologne, no one in the Council would bother listening to her. Cologne resolved to tell Akane the truth first, playing on the girl’s obvious (if often denied) affections for Ranma, and if that didn’t work, Cologne was prepared to be much less kind.

As the dusk came and went, Cologne took an oil lamp and ventured out in the dusk. Her destination was a telegraph and radio office located just by the banks of the stream that bent and wound through the village. It was little more than a cramped wooden shack, but the vast collection of wires and cables coming in told well of its importance. Even at odd hours of the night, operators manned the several stations within for word from their countrymen abroad. To call Japan, Cologne borrowed the village’s only telephone and dialed. The reception was lousy, fraught with noise and static, but it would have to do.

“Hello?” said a voice through the crackling on the other end.

“I need to speak to Tendō Akane,” said Cologne. “Is she in?”

“She is,” said Akane. “You’re the old woman who lives with Shampoo, aren’t you? Well—” There were some unusual noises on the other end of the line. “Oh, P-chan, please be quiet! Sorry about that.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Cologne. “It’s not like I’m calling you from halfway across the continent.”

Akane seemed to pick up on Cologne’s dry remark, and she responded in kind—sharply, and to the point. “What’s this about? Whatever made you three pack up and leave in a hurry isn’t any of my family’s business. If you forgot something, you’ll have to get it yourself. We don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Nor I you, Tendō, believe me, but circumstances have forced my hand. As you might’ve expected, it is no coincidence Shampoo and I have left Japan with Ranma abroad in China. The two matters are intimately intertwined.”

“You found Ranma? You know where he is?”

“He has been taken by people whose power you can’t begin to fathom. Beyond that, do the details really matter? He is in danger, and you have the power to aid him. My people amass for war, but they care nothing for Ranma. Shampoo can take command of a war party, Tendō. She can direct my people to save him, but only if she is unambiguously deemed his wife. Come before my people’s leaders and deny that Ranma has any affection for you nor you for him. Your word will make a difference. It may give us the leverage we need. What do you say to that?”

There was a hesitation on the other end of the line. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? You people would do that—you _would_ bother to try humiliating me when Ranma is missing! After all, what’s that compared to Shampoo trying to kill me?”

Cologne scoffed. That was exactly like Akane—exaggerating things out of proportion. “Please, Tendō, a few explosive meat buns hardly constitutes a significant attempt on your life.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. She didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Another pause, and this time Cologne lacked the patience to see it through.

“Do not waste my time, Tendō. This call isn’t cheap. If you will be of no use to me, then we have nothing more to discuss.”

“No! No, wait. I’ll be there for Ranma, but that’s all. You understand me?”

All too clearly. Neither of them would think this arrangement a truly cooperative effort. It was an alliance of convenience, nothing more. Akane’s cryptic remark gave Cologne some pause, but not nearly as much as the curious gazes from the telegraph operators.

“By all means, take off your headphones and listen to me instead of your telegraphs,” said Cologne. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you’re here for.”

The operators quickly went back to work, but the damage had been done. In her haste, Cologne had made a mistake. Any fool would realize she was speaking Japanese into that phone, and to get Akane out there quickly, she would need more transportation and resources—a request that wouldn’t be easy to hide. If there were any secrecy about what she’d intended before, Cologne put aside such delusions in a hurry. No doubt one of these operators would blab to Bindi or Thanaka about what Cologne had done, but there was nothing Cologne could do about it. The pieces were already laid out on the chess board, and Cologne had already committed her forces. There was nothing left to do but bide time until she could take down Bindi and Thanaka’s defenses, until not a single defending elephant of theirs remained. They all knew that conflict was coming. Hopefully, those obstinate elders would make a mistake before she did.

  


Over the next two days, Cologne planned out her gambit to take control of the Amazons’ war effort and give command to Shampoo. She continued to study legal texts, knowing the Council could defeat her on just a simple technicality she’d failed to recall. She interviewed the Guide and his daughter and pondered over the Sorcerers peculiar interest in Saffron to no avail. As for the third member of their group, warriors had been asked to keep him under guard, lest he run off from the village, delusional and believing his darling pigtailed girl to be in danger. Someone that insane could start a war without even knowing it.

“Surely even that nit can be kept restrained long enough to talk to,” Cologne had reasoned.

“I’m sorry; the Council has given strict orders,” said the warrior guarding Kunō’s guest room. “The boy is not to be spoken to except by the Council themselves.”

Very peculiar. He couldn’t be that unstable, could he?

Strange as that may have been, Cologne didn’t have time to question it. She had to plan out the girls’ statements. Her great-granddaughter’s part in the tale would be simple: all they had to do was play up the most suggestive moments between Ranma and Shampoo and offer them as evidence. Ranma had journeyed to Mount Kensei and made rescuing her from the Phoenix people’s mind control a priority, after all. That he wanted the curse water to cure him as well was just a minor detail.

Akane, too, would have an easy story to tell, one mostly grounded in truth. She and Ranma had had spats in the past. One such moment of jealousy had allowed Shampoo to make off with the map to Jusenkyō while she was under the influence of Phoenix mind control. All Akane had to say was that after the wedding was broken up, she blamed Ranma for not dealing with her rivals for her and they’d had a falling out. Ranma had never wanted to marry her, and once he’d made that clear, Akane had no more reason to pursue him.

That was Cologne’s plan, at least, but she was under no illusions that everything would go off without a hitch. Bindi and Thanaka each had their own set of spies and informants monitoring Cologne’s movements and actions. For each of the past two mornings, Cologne had spotted the same man watching her by the banks of the river as she went to collect water. Given the size of the village, to see someone she didn’t know around her home was unusual indeed, but to her surprise, the first wrinkle in her plot came not from the Speakers but Akane herself, for when she arrived outside the village by helicopter as Cologne had done, she was far from alone.

“Wow,” said Ukyō, rubbing her neck and stretching as she left the chopper. “You guys really know how to get people to China fast.” She yawned. “Could’ve done with an in-flight meal or two, though.”

And it was more than just Ukyō, too. Ryōga climbed out of the chopper with an umbrella in hand, scanning the sky for signs of dark clouds, and Ukyō’s faithful servant Konatsu, the rare male kunoichi, held up a shuriken to look at his own reflection and started fixing his hair.

“What is this?” cried Cologne. “I asked for one person, not four!”

“You think I’m going to take hearing that Ranchan’s been kidnapped lightly?” asked Ukyō, who adjusted her bandolier of throwing spatulas. “Not a chance. I already missed all the fun last time in China. I’m in this to the end.”

“I go where Ukyō-sama goes,” said Konatsu. “To the market, the cleaners, the toilet—”

All eyes turned to Konatsu, some curious, others aghast.

“I mean, that’s not—” The stammering Kontasu blushed. “Oh dear….”

Cologne looked to Ryōga. “And you, Hibiki? Are you sure you wish to stay here and risk losing yourself in Thailand before you can find the bath?”

Ryōga grimaced. “That may be a risk. Like Konatsu for Ukyō, I’m here to see to Akane-san’s safety. In a village full of Amazons, I think it’s best not to leave anything to chance.”

“Ukyō can help testify about Ranma,” Akane explained. “She insisted on coming anyway. Konatsu and Ryōga-kun are just here for the ride. If it’s inconvenient, well, that’s more incentive to get Ranma back safe and sound sooner, right?”

Cologne huffed. Such subtly manipulative thinking. If Cologne had had any doubts about making Akane lie before the Council, she put them aside. It seemed for Ranma’s sake the girl was well prepared for the task. And to Cologne’s relief, the others hadn’t come to her totally clueless, either. Ukyō had already crafted a story about Ranma insisting that she couldn’t understand what he and Shampoo had gone through in China, something that hewed close enough to the truth to be convincing.

With that settled, Cologne showed the guests from Japan into her home. As Akane had said, it would be best for all of them if they didn’t need to stay long, but it was already late in the day. The Council had long since retired for the evening, so the weary travelers would do well to rest, eat, and collect their thoughts before they visited the Council the next morning.

“The Council is too stubborn to resolve this deadlock,” Cologne said. “We will resolve it for them, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.” Cologne glanced down the hallway on the ground floor, eyeing the corner bedroom. “Shampoo, come!” she called out. “We will have to fetch more vegetables. We have an extra handful of guests to feed.”

Treading lightly, Shampoo emerged, and right away there was a shift and chill in the air. Ukyō stepped closer, slightly between Akane and Shampoo, and Ryōga did the same.

“Ah, many more come than Shampoo thought,” said Shampoo in her muddled but intelligible Japanese. “Is big, big surprise.”

“It is.” Cologne looked to Akane, then Ukyō. “Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem,” said Ukyō. “I’m sure we can all get along for a couple of days, right, Akane-chan?”

“We all want to see Ranma safe right now, don’t we?” said Akane. “So, no, I don’t have a problem. We can figure things out back home.” She shot a cold gaze at Shampoo. “Maybe we can even fight it out for him if you like. That really worked out great the first time.”

Cologne narrowed her eyes. “Make yourselves comfortable. Shampoo and I will return shortly to prepare dinner.”

With that, the two Amazons stepped out. Shampoo trudged out after Cologne, but the matriarch caught her by the arm with a firm grip.

“Is there something you should tell me, Child?” she asked in Chinese. “Because if so, you should say it now. You have been withdrawn for weeks now, and it’s clear Tendō and Kuonji hold some sort of grudge. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care about your antics, but the Council has ways of finding these things out. If you truly care for your beloved, you will tell me, or else with your silence you risk his life. You decide.”

Shampoo faced forward, a dark pall coming over her, like the aura of a condemned woman on the way to her death. She spoke quietly, but her words were precise and clear—and lacking in emotion. “It started on Monday,” she said. “The day after the wedding…”

  


The day after the wedding, Shampoo rode through the streets of Nerima ward, her pace brisk and swift. The air was crisp and cool, and a northerly wind blew through her hair. It was morning, and the pedaling action of her legs helped keep her awake and alert. The previous day had proved tiring, for it’d taken almost an two hours for Shampoo to clean off the debris from the battle once she returned home. Black powder and beer stuck to her skin, but that filth was a small price to pay for disrupting this sudden attempt to wed Ranma and Akane.

Her only regret was that Ranma was knocked out in the chaos. All in all, the affairs with the Phoenix had turned out rather well for Shampoo, at least with regard to Ranma. He’d gone to great lengths to save her from the Phoenix’s mind control, and in defeating Saffron, he’d more than proved his worth to be at her side—as if he’d needed to prove anything. Still, it couldn’t hurt to show Ranma a token of gratitude and apology, and that’s why she rode her bike that morning: to deliver a gift. A white box tied off in red ribbon jittered in her bicycle’s basket, and she eyed it with a happy grin.

That grin grew ever wider when she spied Ranma on the road by the canal. True, Akane was at his side, but that was typical. They always walked to school together. It seldom meant they were getting along. Though Shampoo often liked to surprise Ranma, she _had_ already brought him harm once that week, so she decided a little warning was in order, and she rang her bicycle’s bell repeatedly. “Ranma!”

He twitched instantly, peering back over his shoulder as Shampoo broke to a stop. Akane turned, watching Shampoo from the corner of her eye.. “Why, look, Ranma,” she said dryly, “it’s your sexy fianée.”

Ranma scoffed. “Jealousy isn’t good for you.”

“Who says I’m jealous?” asked Akane, folding her arms.

That was just like them. Even if they had been married, they would continue to squabble and bicker. That’s what made Shampoo different. She knew how to show Ranma her devotion.

“What are you doing out here, Shampoo?” he asked her. “You got something for us?”

As a matter of fact, she did. “Shampoo very sorry for hurting Ranma yesterday,” she explained, beaming. “Have gift that Ranma will find very tasty!”

“Tasty?” he echoed. “It’s food? Where?”

“So the path to your heart is through your stomach after all,” Akane teased.

“That must be why you never got on it,” he shot back.

“Who said I was trying anything like that?”

Business as usual. Having Ranma enjoy her gift with Akane watching would please Shampoo all the more. She undid the ribbon, opened the box, and took one of the items in hand—

And in a flash, Ranma caught her wrist and snatched the pork bun from her grasp.

Akane gaped. “Ranma? What are you—”

He hurled the pork bun over the fence, and the dumpling splashed in the water below. “Get down!” he shouted at Akane, and he yanked her behind him, using his own body as a shield.

…a shield to protect her while the pork bun sank to the canal’s bottom.

“What you doing?” asked Shampoo. She sniffed at another pork bun, puzzled. “Shampoo make these all by herself. Smell very good.”

Akane narrowed her eyes. “You like the smell of gunpowder?”

That’s what they were afraid of? Really, the exploding pork buns were just a one-time thing. “Is clearly not same bun,” said Shampoo, opening another bun in half for both of them to see. “No gunpowder.”

“Like Ranma and I could’ve known that just by looking at it,” said Akane.

Shampoo glared. “What Akane think is not point. Shampoo want make apology.” She faced Ranma, beaming. “Shampoo so, so sorry for hurting Ranma. Thankful, too, that Ranma save Shampoo from bird-men mind control.” Setting the kickstand on her bike, Shampoo left her bike, took the box from the basket, and offered it to Ranma with both hands. “Ranma accept?”

He frowned at that, and he glanced back at Akane, who had a stern look for him, but stayed silent, averting her gaze. Ranma took the box with both hands, to Shampoo’s delight—

And then he put it back in the bicycle’s basket.

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” he said flatly. “Let’s go, Akane. We’re going to be late.”

Akane stared back at him in surprise, but as the two of them turned to go, she dared to smile a little, to bask in his nearness and warmth.

It was then that Shampoo realized not all was right after returning from China. Ranma had taken the threat to Akane’s life too seriously, and what had happened as a result? Had they bonded over it? Had Akane, grateful that Ranma had saved her, at last started to pursue him in earnest as Shampoo had?

Shampoo couldn’t allow that. That girl was already living with him, and though Akane would hardly know how to seduce him, Ranma was a red-blooded man, wasn’t he? Even Akane could pressure him—coerce him—into something he didn’t really want.

So Shampoo turned her bicycle around and headed back to the Cat Café. She dumped the box of pork buns in the garbage and went upstairs, to her bedroom, and searched through a shallow closet for the right tool for the job. Amazons were trained warriors, few more well-trained than Shampoo for her age, and her skills with various weapons were formidable. Leaning against the closet’s wall was a fighting stick, a staff weapon that was versatile and strong but inappropriate for her purposes here. Hanging from a rack was a one-handed sword with a gold-colored handle, heavy and deadly, but this too was more than Shampoo wanted. She should show Akane strength as a warning, a courtesy, and her choice of weapon should match that intent. For this reason, she chose the pair of painted maces that were tied together on the floor. With two heavy metal bulbs, these _chúi_ were distinctive, showy weapons, and that suited Shampoo just fine.

After running some errands for Cologne, Shampoo headed back out on her bike, making for the high school, and she arrived just as the lunchtime bell rang. Hopefully this would be a quick conversation. She would remind Akane who Ranma really belonged to, and Akane would scoff, saying, “Who said I wanted him for myself anyway?” or some such thing. If Akane decided to be stubborn, it might come to some sort of challenge to decide things, which Shampoo would win easily. And if Akane had any good sense about her, any fear for her life after what Saffron nearly took from her, she would back down, and that would be just as good for Shampoo.

From outside the school grounds, Shampoo searched for Ranma and Akane. Ranma she didn’t find; perhaps he was eating inside. Akane, however, was in plain view, eating with a group of girls. What were they talking about? How Ranma had saved Akane? The aborted wedding? Shampoo couldn’t know; she couldn’t hear from that distance, but she could imagine much. All of them assumed Akane would be the one to make Ranma hers. Shampoo would just have to prove them wrong.

Her opportunity came as the lunch break began to wind down. The group of girls started to disperse, but Akane lingered outside. She wandered down toward the athletic fields and even did a few short sprints, coming up winded each time. She wasn’t in good health, not after being evaporated into a doll and restored. Shampoo could use that.

With Akane largely alone, Shampoo put out the kickstand on her bike and climbed over the wall surrounding the school. Her maces she kept in a harness on her back, for ease and comfort. She approached Akane with a brisk and purposeful step, but Akane caught sight of her.

“If you’re thinking about enrolling in school, you’ll need a real uniform,” she said. “Those Chinese dresses draw too much attention, don’t you think?”

“Shampoo not interested in school. Get all good education at home, training to become warrior.”

Akane faced forward, her chin on her hands. “You’re free to go back to China if it’s so much better there. What do you want, Shampoo?”

“Akane know where Ranma is?”

“Now? No. Why? You don’t have another gift for him, do you?”

Shampoo shook her head. “No. Is fine if Ranma gone. Is better. Shampoo come to see Akane.”

“I’m not marrying you, either.”

More sarcasm. If that was Akane’s only defense, then this would be easy. “Akane being too too familiar with husband.”

“He’s not your husband.”

“He _is_ , whether you like or not. By tribal law he is.”

“Good for your tribe. We don’t really care.”

“Ranma almost die saving you from Saffron.”

Akane flinched, and for the first time in their whole conversation, she broke her gaze from the playing fields to meet Shampoo’s gaze. “Excuse me?”

“If not for you, Ranma, Mousse, and Ryōga just wait for Saffron take his bath and move along. Keema and others have no use for Shampoo once Saffron transform.”

“They still had to save you; you’re the one who got mind-controlled.”

“Phoenix people catch Shampoo unaware. Is not Shampoo fault.”

“Yeah, like I expected a flock of birds to break through my window and carry me to China.”

Shampoo frowned. “Is beside point. Husband take many chances for Akane. He do much to protect you. You risk his life to be close to him.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you no compare to Ranma as martial artist.”

“Oh really!”

“Or to me.” She turned, watching Akane from the corner of her eye. “You no think so?”

“You think I can’t take you on?” said Akane.

Shampoo grinned. She was taking the bait. “I say we fight for Ranma. Loser give up all claim to him, yes? Then things between us settled for good.”

Akane narrowed her eyes at that, and she stood up and hopped off the bleachers. Yes, there was spirit in her. She wanted to deny it. She wanted to prove to herself—and to Ranma—that she was worthy of standing at his side, but she wasn’t. She was weak, and she would only drag Ranma down. If she truly cared for him, why couldn’t she see that? No, she was stubborn. She didn’t want to accept her weakness. Perhaps Shampoo would have to teach her one more time for it to stick.

“What you decide?” Shampoo pressed. “Accept challenge or give up Ranma for good?”

Her fists tight, Akane looked down, her breathing steady and calm. Having collected herself, she met Shampoo’s gaze again and delivered her answer firmly, leaving no room for doubt.

“You wouldn’t want to fight me if you thought Ranma loved you.”

What? How could she—of _course_ Ranma loved Shampoo. He just needed help seeing that. What right did Akane have to tell Shampoo otherwise? “You fight or no?” Shampoo growled.

“No! I no fight. We can beat on each other ‘til dusk, but it won’t matter. Ranma will choose one of us, not from some stupid contest but from his heart. Believe whatever else you like. Fall back on your laws if you must, but know this, Shampoo: _you don’t have his heart._ ”

Shampoo trembled, speechless, seething.

“Now, I have class to get to,” said Akane, trotting past her. “Excuse me.”

And Shampoo stood there, aghast. Akane didn’t feel the need to fight her? Didn’t think she was a worthy opponent? Was she so secure, so confident that Ranma had become taken with her, that she felt no fear at all?

Whatever Akane’s reasons, her refusal to rise to Shampoo’s challenge was a humiliation, and Shampoo felt the weight of it. Other students watched Shampoo and whispered to themselves, gossiping, but Shampoo silenced them with a glare. She unharnessed both her maces, feeling their weight in her hands, and stomped after her prey. “Akane!”

Akane stopped at a door to the building, touching a handle. She looked back, wary, but she didn’t flee. “What do you want now?”

“Shampoo make challenge. You no can refuse.”

Akane fingered the latch to the entrance door. “I think I just did.”

Shampoo thrust a mace forward, brushing the tip of Akane’s nose. “If Akane no fight, then Shampoo make her fight. You give up Ranma if lose? Or no?”

Squirming, Akane shrank under Shampoo’s gaze. “But I—”

“Decide, now!”

Akane decided all right. She turned and yanked at the door handle.

WHAM! Shampoo’s mace struck her in the back, forcing Akane forward and shutting the door in front of her. Akane’s body slammed against the steel post between the two doors, and this time, Shampoo spun her around and pressed the ball of the mace firmly against Akane’s forehead, pinning Akane’s skull between the ball and the post.

“Shampoo, what the hell are you doing?” From down the path, Ukyō trotted up, brandishing her giant battle spatula. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Is no concern of Spatula Girl,” Shampoo growled. “Akane refuse challenge she no can ignore. If no fight fair, only one way left now!”

“The wedding was one thing,” said Ukyō, “but this is different! This is a school!”

“Is same as wedding,” said Shampoo. “We no can fight for Ranma only where we want. No can stop for school or chapel. Shampoo fight for Ranma. Shampoo fight every obstacle, no matter what.” She arched her arm overhead, bringing her full weight and strength on the point of contact between Akane’s skull and the head of the mace. She pressed, and Akane’s eyes crossed as she winced in pain. “No struggle, Akane,” Shampoo intoned. “In my tribe, weak girls learn quick; they no struggle. They accept defeat.”

But Akane did not. She flailed; she grabbed the handle and yanked the mace away.

SMASH! Shampoo thrust her second mace forward with her left hand, shattering the glass of the door and driving Akane’s free arm through the shards. The sharp points drew blood, which trickled across Akane’s knuckles and down to her elbow.

“All right, that’s enough!” cried Ukyō, pointing her spatula at Shampoo. “This is crazy. You think Ranchan would approve of what you’re doing? Stop this. Stop this right now!”

“Come no closer!” cried Shampoo, pressing her mace back against Akane’s forehead. “Come no closer, or I kill Akane right now!”

Ukyō balked, looking back and forth between Akane and Shampoo. Her grip on her battle spatula was firm, but she held fast, as if vines had grown from the ground to root her in place.

And that was good, for Akane still had too much fight in her. Backed up against the doorway, she fought blindly, her eyes nearly shut from the pain she was in, and because of that, Shampoo outclassed her. When Akane kicked wildly, Shampoo caught the foot between her maces and spun Akane around in a dizzying whirl, only to bat Akane with the bulb of a mace to her back.

THUD! “YAH! Ahh…” Akane bounced off the steel post of the double doors. The metal dented and cracked, but even the sound of the supports shearing was tame compared to Akane’s scream. That blow to the back seemed to drain her. It made her movements weak and feeble, like those of a wounded squirrel that couldn’t quite reach its prized nut, for a car had smashed its legs and tail, and it couldn’t move anymore. That was Akane. She was pitiful and pathetic, and as long as she knew it, Shampoo would do no more.

“Is time to admit defeat,” said Shampoo, lowering her guard. “Ranma is mine, not yours. Say it.”

But though her breathing was labored, though the fingers of her bloodied right hand were limp as her wrist dangled, Akane shook her head. “This won’t make him love you, Shampoo. You can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want. Believe me. I tried more than once before I realized it. This is meaningless, Shampoo. It doesn’t accomplish anything.”

How brash and brazen Akane could be if she thought to chide Shampoo for this act, to tell her it was pointless and futile. She was the weak one! She was the one hanging on that broken doorframe just to stand up. She didn’t know anything about Ranma, or anything about Shampoo, either! It was no less than insulting, and to see Akane looking back at her—not in fear but in pity instead—burned Shampoo to the core.

“So it is,” said Shampoo, her voice cold and low. “What happen yesterday not enough to make Ranma love anyone else. As long as Akane around, Ranma only love her. That why Akane no should lived at Jusenkyō.” She raised a mace overhead, pointing the ball at the sky, and her voice rose to a deathly shout. “That why Akane no should live now!”

She pulled down on the head of the mace, but to her surprise, the ball stayed in place. A hand caught her wrist, and it squeezed and twisted, wrenching the mace from her grasp. The chúi hit head first on the sidewalk with a _clink_. Shampoo didn’t dare look at her attacker. She knew his strength and speed well enough, and she trembled to just to be facing it. Still, she tried to explain.

“Is not what it look like,” she claimed. “Shampoo only meant to—”

He shoved her to the ground, skinning her knees, but his grip on her arm held fast. Outstretched out and twisted, her arm cried for relief. The ligaments and tendons in her elbow gave and gave, and it was only a matter of time before they could give no more. He was punishing her; how could he punish her? Hadn’t she shown she was stronger?

But that didn’t matter to him, did it? Shampoo looked over her shoulder through teary eyes, but Ranma’s gaze was cold and damning. He didn’t say a word, and he didn’t have to. His silence was just as punishing as anything he might say instead. He too trembled, but with fury, not fear.

“Ranma.” Akane limped toward him, cradling her bloodied hand. “Ranma, it’s all right. I’m all right. You got her; it’s okay now.”

But Ranma’s grip only tightened, and Shampoo’s fingers tingled, turning blue.

Akane touched Ranma’s shoulder, shaking him lightly. “Hey! Ranma!”

He blinked. He breathed in sharply, meeting Akane’s gaze with surprise and confusion. He let Shampoo go, and her arm relaxed. The Amazon fell to her knees, crumpled and defeated.

Ranma stared at his own fingers. He flexed them, wiggled them. They responded, but who could say what he expected them to do. His gaze was bright yet hollow, like a child lost in the woods.

A circle of spectators mumbled amongst themselves. Prime among them, Ukyō strapped her battle spatula to her back, but the distance between her and Ranma was great indeed.

Akane moved between Ranma and the other students. “Everyone, back to your classes!” she said. “Or do you want to hold buckets in the hall?”

The crowd dispersed, of course, and after a fashion, Ukyō moved on too, but her concerned, yearning looks lingered there, far after she’d gone. Ranma and Akane went in, too, with Ranma offering an arm to support her. The only person left was Shampoo, isolated and alone, left to contemplate her mistakes and cradle a wound with no one to turn to for strength.

  


With a basket of bean sprouts, carrots, and other vegetables in hand, Cologne shook her head, the taste in her mouth already bitter, even before they’d returned home to eat. “That was a foolish move,” she told Shampoo, who walked quietly at her side. “If you were going to kill her, you should’ve done it quietly, while she was sleeping, where no witnesses could speak to what you’d done. You had nothing to prove to Ranma if you had done nothing. Your insistence on doing otherwise only shows that you did after all. And that hasn’t changed, has it?”

Shampoo hung her head, saying nothing, and that was likely the only wise thing she’d done in some time. Clearly the girl had taken this mistake to heart. Knowing how she’d have to lie before the Council come the next morning, Cologne refrained from chastising her any further. Shampoo would have to live with the memory of her error, knowing how Ranma punished her for it.

On the whole, though, Cologne was relieved. Everyone who had witnessed the affair was on Shampoo’s side, at least for the moment. Still, Akane had gotten the better of Shampoo because she’d kept her emotions in check. The Speakers of the Council were even more crafty. Could Shampoo really withstand their questions?

“I will not speak unless spoken to,” Shampoo assured her. “Silence is the best protection against their questions.”

Quite right, but that was a promise easily made and harder to adhere to. Nevertheless, Cologne had few other options in play. The Amazons as a people might stand idle, incapable of decision-making, for days to come unless a major break in situation came. Short of Sorcerers abducting Amazons from the forest, the Council would be just as happy sitting on their hands, doing nothing. That wouldn’t rescue Ranma or help Cologne with her own goals. Good things seldom came without risk.

Once Shampoo and Cologne returned home, they went right to preparing dinner for the guests, which was largely quiet. The lot of them represented a temporary alliance, nothing more, and the girls clearly realized that their cooperation was in their own best interest—and Ranma’s, too—but they didn’t have to like it.

This wary truce continued through the breakfast the next morning until a plume of black smoke rose over the cliffs around the village. That was the signal Cologne had waited too long for.

As the matriarch of her family and elder stateswoman of them all, Cologne led this group—this party of those interested in Ranma’s safety, who’d journeyed from the Nerima ward of Tōkyō to see him rescued—to the Council’s sanctuary and meeting place. It was no grand hall they headed for. Rather, the Council of Elders met in the wilds, up a steep and rocky path to the top of a cliff above the village. Though it was a difficult climb, to make this journey was a rite not only for the villagers but for their Elders, too. No member of the Council could remain in its ranks without making that hike under their own power. This duty demanded strength of both mind and body, and that winding hike reinforced the notion every day.

At the top of the path was an outcropping of trees and brush. A single campfire among the tree trunks marked where the Council held chambers. There was no place to sit except on the ground—not even a simple wooden bench could be seen. All twelve members of the Council stood around the campfire, equally inconvenienced.

“Do they stand there all day?” asked Ukyō.

“Indeed,” said Cologne, hopping up the path with her walking stick. “In theory, the discomfort should encourage the Council to be swift and make decisions, but all I’ve seen is that it excuses impotent old men and women from making decisions at all. If there is a matter that cannot be reconciled, they simply adjourn for the day and retire.”

They were the Silent Nine, whose hoods shaded their faces from the afternoon sun, and the Three Speakers—Bindi, Thanaka, and Surma, whose gray cloaks had no hoods at all. It was no unfamiliar sight to Cologne, who had worn the trappings of an Elder on the Council for many years. Still, the sense of ceremony and reverence for the Council’s duty came back to her surprisingly strong. This place was not just the seat of Amazon power. No doubt there was at least one good and honest woman on the Council looking to do right by the Tribe, but that might be all. Seeing how stiff the Elders conducted themselves, Cologne realized once again that this deception was neither foolproof nor easy.

“Welcome, Cologne, Shampoo, and our guests from afar.” Speaker Surma stepped forward, smoothing the wrinkles out from her cloak. She met Cologne and the rest of the Nerima party by the bonfire and gave a respectful nod. “The Council sits in open chambers and is ready to hear you.”

“Then I am honored to speak as the Speakers do.” Cologne pressed her lips together, lest a more colorful remark come out instead. _What an honor it is, truly, to speak like a pack of obstinate fools._

Speaker Surma smiled slightly, amused. “And we are honored to have you. Please, state your business before the Council.”

“Elders, let me not waste more of your time than you already do yourselves. My great-granddaughter Shampoo wishes to invoke the Last Right of a Wife. She is lawfully married to Saotome Ranma, whom we know was taken by Sorcerers at the spring ground, and as such, he is a member of the Tribe, giving Shampoo power under the Laws of our people to rescue him. This request is simple, and the Laws are clear. There is no other choice consistent with the Law but to grant this request, and I will prove it.”

For Cologne, that was the essence of the argument—if Shampoo could prove she was Ranma’s wife in the eyes of tribal law, then her rights under the law couldn’t be disputed.

“It is this Council’s responsibility to follow the law even when it should prove inconvenient,” Cologne pointed out. “That is the core of any society that obeys the rule of law. Laws are not meant to be ignored simply because we choose to do so. If this Council finds the Last Right to be so in opposition of the people’s needs, then the Right should be revoked categorically and absolutely, not just in this case.”

Speaker Bindi scoffed at that. “Oh yes, let’s just pretend it hasn’t been decades since this body made law, let alone revoked a right of the people.”

“First Speaker, you talk out of turn,” said Speaker Surma, “There must be order to these deliberations, or else the Nine have the duty to move against the Three.”

Snarling, Speaker Bindi waved her hand dismissively, signalling to Cologne to continue.

“To be sure, I have no desire to spend more time before this body than I must,” Cologne went on. “So I call for a vote here and now. Elders, if Shampoo can prove to you that she is indeed Saotome Ranma’s wife in the eyes of the law, will you stand by the Last Right, or will you not?”

“Surely we needn’t stand here and be insulted with the implication that we won’t uphold the law,” said Speaker Bindi. “I move to waive such a vote.”

“As do I,” said Speaker Thanaka. “There will be plenty to argue later, hm?”

Cologne huffed. Though she often fancied the Council fools, Bindi and Thanaka were clearly of more competent breed. They would not be baited into disparaging the rule of law, which would’ve certainly soured the Nine against them. Cologne did not lament this defeat for too long, though. She was well-prepared to fight to the end.

Surma waived the vote as well, and with the Three Speakers’ assent, Cologne was left to present her case that Shampoo had fulfilled the law’s command and claimed Ranma. Her first witness to this effect was Ukyō, and though Cologne had had little time to prepare a story for her, Ukyō did a fine job telling the Council the tale they’d agreed on.

“I admit I did have a part in trying to break up Ranchan and Akane-chan’s wedding,” said Ukyō. “No way was I going to let their parents get away with that. At the time, I thought that it was all finished and things would settle down for a while, but a couple days later, Ranchan took me aside at my shop, and I could tell he was different. Ranchan isn’t a moron. He wouldn’t be half the martial artist he is if he weren’t at least a little sharp, but most of the time he doesn’t think about much more than what’s right in front of him. So yeah, I didn’t expect him to come to my restaurant and talk about how things had changed since he went to China, how I couldn’t understand that because I hadn’t been there.” Ukyō glanced over her shoulder at the rest of the party. “You know, since he rescued Shampoo from those Phoenix dweebs. I’d come to the wedding with bombs, and if any of them had hurt Shampoo, well, we couldn’t be friends anymore, and we certainly couldn’t be lovers like I wanted. Those were his words, and he made it very, very clear to me who he really cared for. I wasn’t going to give up, but if it helps him now, then it can’t hurt to say what happened.”

When Ukyō was finished, she stepped back into line between Shampoo and Akane, and all eyes turned to the Speakers for their questioning and rebuttal of the evidence presented to them.

“Why should we believe you?” asked Speaker Bindi, first to challenge Ukyō’s remarks. “You bring no evidence before us. This is all on your word. Hearsay and innuendo—is that all you bring before us, Cologne?”

“Just what am I to produce here, the better part of half a world away from where it happened?” Cologne scoffed. “I think we got along just fine before the PRC brought in their videocameras and photographs.”

“Cologne is correct on this point,” ruled Speaker Surma. “There can be no expectation of hard proof here.”

Speaker Bindi snarled, curling her upper lip. “My question remains. Kuonji Ukyō, why should we believe you? When it is so convenient that Saotome Ranma would become taken with Shampoo just before this grand mess, shouldn’t we be suspicious of what you say?”

“You’re welcome to be suspicious,” said Ukyō, “but everything I’ve told you is the truth, just the way I remember it. I challenge you to look into my eyes and say that it isn’t.”

Ukyō’s conviction was hard to refute. Indeed, the best lies had some elements of truth mixed in with them, and having heard Shampoo’s tale the night before, Cologne realized that Ukyō, too, proved convincing and earnest because her story came from memory, not the deep recesses of her imagination. Ukyō had just had the good sense to leave ambiguous what might not work in Shampoo’s favor. After Shampoo had angered Ranma, there was no way he’d go to Ukyō to defend her. But to defend someone else, someone in need of his protection and care…

Cologne glanced upward at Akane, who turned her head away, unwilling to meet the old woman’s gaze. Yes, that was it. That was the truth Ukyō was hiding, and she’d done it well. Well enough to withstand the Council’s scrutiny, or so Cologne hoped.

Stymied, Speaker Bindi deferred to Thanaka, but the Second Speaker quickly passed. “I have no questions for this girl,” he said. “None that I trust to be truth, at least.”

A brief round of rebuttal indeed. Perhaps that was their strategy. The less the Speakers dwelled on any one story, the less credible the Nine might find it. The lack of comment put Cologne on edge, for the longer the two Speakers kept to themselves, the more difficult it would prove to refute them.

Closing the round of Speakers’ rebuttal, Surma asked Ukyō only one question. “When precisely did this happen?” she inquired.

“The day before he left,” answered Ukyō, and that was all for the Speakers’ remarks for the moment. Ukyō stepped back, and Akane took her place by the bonfire. She glanced between the twelve elders cautiously, like a mouse cornered by a group of cats.

“Don’t be intimidated, Tendō,” Cologne reminded her in a whisper. “Only three of these people will ever speak to you. For the moment, the floor is yours.”

She nodded meekly, and with the eyes of the Twelve upon her, Akane spoke—hesitantly at first, but with a steady pace as she went on. “I, um, was going to marry Ranma because my father promised me Ranma would be cured if he went through with it. It’s not a great reason, but I consider Ranma a friend, and I thought I could deal with it and that he could, too. After the wedding was broken up, though, I fought with him, and he with me. I blamed him, at least a little bit.

“And maybe, just maybe, I thought he might be in love with me the way I was in love with him.”

Cologne snuck a glance upward, at Akane. What was the girl doing? That wasn’t part of Cologne’s script for her. All Akane had to do was say that Ranma had rejected her. She didn’t need to admit any feelings for him, and knowing how resistant Akane had been to doing so in the past, Cologne had thought such a ploy a risky idea at best. But there Akane was, despite the shocked and surprised stares from Ryōga, Ukyō, and Shampoo. Cologne didn’t dare interrupt and spoil their only chance to drive the Amazons to action.

“Ranma saved Shampoo at Jusenkyō, yes,” Akane went on. “He broke her free from that Keema and her mind-control eggs, but he saved me, too, and I thought that meant—I thought I _heard_ —that he loved me, but I was wrong. I tried to confront Ranma about it and find out what he really felt for me. I found him outside Ukyō’s restaurant, but he’d already told Shampoo that he loved her, and he’d told Ukyō off, too, but I didn’t want to believe it. I insisted—no, I _demanded_ that he tell me he loved me, and if he wouldn’t do that, then he was a coward! He wouldn’t even be half a man like that.

“It was so easy—” Akane stopped mid-sentence, suppressing a sob. With a short sniffle she wiped away at a tear that ran down her cheek. “It was so easy for me to say such a hurtful thing, but I asked him to say something I never had the courage to speak aloud—at least, until now. But those words are why Ranma came here. I _know_ it is. You don’t just insult the manhood of a boy who’s cursed like he is. If not for that, he wouldn’t ever have come here at all. So that’s why I had to say it, even in front of strangers, in front of all of you. I don’t care how it humiliates me to admit it. It’s a fraction of what I deserve for what I said to him.”

She stepped back, between Ukyō and Ryōga with her head down, and it was all Cologne could do to watch her go.

 _I see,_ thought the old matriarch. _Brave, but foolish, Tendō, if you planned it this way. They will have a hard time refuting our story now that you’ve all but wept at their feet in genuine pain._ Cologne drummed her fingers on her walking stick. _No, you didn’t plan it this way. How many times did we rehearse your part? Enough to count on two hands, at least, but it’s nothing compared to what happens before this bonfire. It changes your perspective. It changed mine, too._

Still, as brilliantly delivered the story had been, Cologne worried Speakers Bindi and Thanaka would discover its gaps. Why should Akane’s words have mattered to Ranma at all if he cared nothing for her? Such could be explained away by Ranma’s wounded pride, perhaps, and Cologne braced just for that barrage.

“First Speaker,” said Surma, “do you have questions?”

“I am not interested in wasting my time, no,” said Speaker Bindi.

“Second Speaker?”

“I too will pass,” said Speaker Thanaka.

Cologne grimaced. What on earth were the fools doing? Cologne had never thought much of Bindi and Thanaka in terms of their positions and opinions, but they could not be this colossally stupid! Were they even trying to challenge Shampoo’s claim of the Last Right, or did they have better things to do when the Council adjourned, like going back to their chess game?

No, no, Bindi and Thanaka were up to something. They must’ve had some reason to refuse challenging Akane and Ukyō so far, but what that reason could be escaped Cologne, and for the moment, she had no choice but to let matters play out and deal with any obstacles as they came up. It was the logical, reasoned thing to do, yet that was little comfort to the uneasiness in her gut.

“Cologne?” asked Speaker Surma. “Who else would you put before the Council to testify regarding Shampoo’s relationship with Saotome Ranma?”

Snapping to her senses, Cologne tapped on Shampoo’s leg with her walking stick. “My own great-granddaughter, of course,” she said, though lacking somewhat in the confidence she’d hoped to bring to this affair. “Shampoo will tell you how Ranma has become taken with her.”

Shampoo went ahead, coming to the center of attention by the Council’s bonfire. Though she’d been distant and private all trip, before these Elders she stood tall and proud.

“Ranma is my beloved,” she told the Council in her native tongue, “and he loves me. He told me so when he came to the restaurant Great-grandmother and I run. At first, he was angry with me for using bombs at that wedding attempt and putting him and his family in danger. He was right about that, and I told him I was sorry. I would never want to hurt Ranma. All I’ve ever wanted was to bear his strong, skilled children and train at his side, to see him learn from our masters and be a part of his growth as a warrior. He is so powerful, so strong. It’s only natural that I’m not the only one who wants him, but I’d been away from home for so long. I tell this Council the truth—I was getting desperate. I knew that wedding was a trick, but still, it hurt me. I told him that, and I told him how disgraceful it would be if I came back home without him, and he understood. He told me I was the only one he could love and that as soon as he could pack up his things, we could go home together, and I believed him. He was the one who saved me from Keema and her Phoenix people. Why wouldn’t I believe him?”

Speaker Bindi huffed. “Yes, yes, and why shouldn’t we believe you?” she mused. “Step back. I have no questions for you.”

“Nor do I,” said Speaker Thanaka.

Cologne hopped forward, demanding the Speakers’ attention. “If you’re not going to challenge the girls, then why are we even arguing this? Grant Shampoo the Right or question the validity of her claim. Anything less makes a mockery of this Council, and though I already hold a low opinion of it and what you people do, this affair lacks all reason!”

“Cologne,” said Speaker Surma, “you talk out of turn. Though I have no questions for Shampoo, the Speakers are entitled to make general remarks in rebuttal of the testimony your witnesses have offered.”

“And that is precisely what I will do now,” said Speaker Bindi. “I have asked no questions of these girls because I’m not interested in hearing their explanations or their thinly-veiled lies. We all have your reports and accounts from Japan, Cologne. Did you yourself think Shampoo the favorite to win Saotome Ranma’s heart?”

“Things change quickly with young men and women. I hardly see your point. You can prove nothing, Bindi, and to accuse guests of the Council of deception is a tall order, even for a Speaker!”

“True. That’s why I won’t be the one to prove it.” She put two fingers to her lips and let out a shrill whistle. “One of our visitors from the spring ground will say all that need be heard.”

Up the path came two Amazons armed with gilded, ceremonial bows, and they escorted a prisoner, whose hands were bound behind his back.

“Tendō Akane!” cried Kunō. “You’ve come for me, at last!”

Akane let out a nervous, exasperated sigh. Ukyō was considerably more direct—she slapped herself on the forehead. “Why does that moron have to be here?” she wondered aloud.

“Kunō Tatewaki, you stand before the Council of Elders,” said Speaker Bindi. “You allege that one of our people has committed a crime in your land, do you not?”

Kunō lunged against his escort’s grasp, but the ceremonial guards held him firm. “It was her!” he cried, eyeing Shampoo. “She tried to murder Tendō Akane!”

Cologne shuddered. She tugged at Shampoo’s shirt, pulling the girl aside as discreetly as she could. “You didn’t tell me _he_ was there.”

“I didn’t think he was,” Shampoo whispered back. “He’s crazy for Akane; if he’d been there, he would’ve tried to save her. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Then that was their play. Whatever Kunō had to say would be suspect—unverified falsehood, as far as they were concerned. “Speakers,” said Cologne, “just what is this boy supposed to testify to? He has long had a rivalry with Ranma. His motives are not pure, and nothing he says can be verified.”

“On the contrary,” said Bindi, “he is uniquely qualified to speak to Saotome Ranma’s intentions and whom he covets most. And if you’re concerned about verifying what the boy says, I must remind you that this Council does not require proof from those who testify. Perhaps you’ve heard of this rule?”

Through eyes as narrow as slits, Cologne stared at Bindi, her gaze nothing short of damning. So that was their plan. They let Ukyō, Akane, and Shampoo testify almost unchallenged, for once Kunō spoke before the Council, the girls would be discredited. It was a valiant attempt, but their conspiracy was all but uncovered. As loathe as Cologne was to do it, the best course for all of them was to accept this defeat. If Kunō were allowed to speak, his testimony would irrevocably damage all their reputations, and their future efforts to save Ranma would become ten times more difficult.

“Speakers,” said Cologne, “Shampoo withdraws her claim of the Last Right. We will leave this body to deliberate on matters of the Tribe’s best interests in peace.”

Shampoo grabbed at Cologne’s walking stick. “Great-grandmother, no!”

“We are not finished yet, Child, but we will be if we allow this debacle to continue. We must go.”

“No!” she cried. “I assert the Right, and I dare anyone to prove Ranma doesn’t love me!”

“If Shampoo wishes to continue, you cannot stop her,” said Bindi, hardly suppressing a smile. “Isn’t that right, Third?”

“The First Speaker is correct; it is, ultimately, Shampoo’s prerogative to continue,” said Speaker Surma. “I’m afraid only Shampoo can choose to end it, Cologne.”

“And so we continue.” Speaker Bindi paced around the fire. “Young Man, you say Shampoo attacked Tendō Akane, yet you concede you did not witness this assault first-hand. Yet surely Shampoo must’ve left some mark.”

Kunō nodded earnestly. “Tendō Akane kept her hand bandaged for at least a week after. I saw that myself.”

Bindi’s eyes locked on to Akane. “Show us your hands,” she said. “Show them for all the Council to see.”

Akane looked to Cologne for guidance, unmoving.

“You will show us your hands, or these warriors here will pry them open for you,” growled Bindi.

Cologne gave a slight, resigned nod, and with that, Akane moved to the center of the Council’s circle. She held out her hands palms down, level with the ground, but Speaker Bindi grabbed both her wrists, turning them over. Sure enough, there was a jagged scar that cut across her right hand, from the base of the pinky finger to the thumb.

Speaker Bindi smiled to herself. “So there it is. Cologne, despite your efforts to mislead this Council, the truth comes out. All three of your witnesses here have conveniently forgotten a crucial incident, one that would’ve surely colored the Nine’s opinions against you, and I can only think you have done so for your own personal gain.”

“That is a bold accusation,” Cologne insisted. “You cannot prove I knew anything of the kind.”

“Perhaps not,” said Bindi through narrowed eyes. “But the rest of your guests are not so fortunate. Elders of the Council, I put forth a motion. Visitors to our village have lied to us. I move to expel them, to revoke the hospitality that they have abused. And as for Shampoo, there can be only one punishment: those who would speak lies to this Council can no longer be permitted to speak. Censure her! Let her choke on silence and have her tongue cut out should she _ever_ speak out of place again!”

“I second this motion,” said Speaker Thanaka. “Third, what say you?”

Visibly resigned to the Council’s will, Speaker Surma looked apologetically to Cologne. “I must concur,” she said. “This offense is too great to ignore.”

Shampoo’s face contorted, and she grabbed onto Cologne’s walking stick in a panic. “Great-grandmother, do something! You can’t let them silence me!”

Cologne shook her head, muttering. “There is nothing to be done. There was no way to avoid this the moment you decided not to heed my warning. Now, as when you attacked Tendō, you acted rashly, and you will be punished for it.”

Speaker Surma went around to the Elders of the Silent Nine with a large straw basket in hand, and from each elder, she collected a strip of cloth.

“What is she doing?” asked Akane.

“Collecting the Elders’ votes,” Cologne explained. “The cloths will burn different colors to signify the vote. A white burst of smoke is a vote to expel you and silence Shampoo. Red is against. If the cloth does not produce smoke at all, it is an abstention. A measure must have five votes either for or against to be considered settled.”

When the Nine had placed their votes into the basket, Speaker Surma closed the basket’s lid and shook vigorously to mix them up. After three good shakes, she opened the lid once more and tossed the first strip into the fire. It burned with pure white smoke.

“For.”

The second strip didn’t burn at all.

“No vote.”

A puff of white smoke.

“For.”

Red smoke.

“Against.”

White smoke.

“For.”

White smoke.

“For.”

No smoke.

“No vote.”

Red smoke.

“Against.”

Four votes for, two against, two abstained. With the final vote in Speaker Surma’s basket, Shampoo balled her hands into fists, her expression as hard as granite. Surma folded the cloth in half and tossed in into the fire, where it burned with a billow of white smoke.

“For. Five votes in favor—the measure has passed. Guests of the Tribe, you will be allowed to recover your belongings, but you must leave before dawn tomorrow morning. Shampoo, step forward.”

With long strides, Shampoo stood by the fire. From a pouch on her belt, Speaker Surma retrieved a necklace of jagged pink quartz.

“In times before, the Council would behead anyone who perjured themselves before the Nine. Today, we are not so barbaric, but I dare say this punishment may be worse.”

Speaker Surma unclasped the necklace and strung it around Shampoo’s neck.

“These red gems stand for blood,” said Surma. “The blood of the beheaded who cannot speak, who can tell no lie, not to the Council, not to the Tribe. Only with your kin may you speak now, and only they may speak on your behalf. To everyone else in the Tribe, you will not be heard, nor will they speak to you.”

Surma stepped back, and all the Elders of the Council turned their backs on Shampoo, the only treatment fit for a pariah.

  


When the party returned to Cologne and Shampoo’s home, the contingent from Nerima headed upstairs to gather their things, per the Council’s order. Shampoo shut herself in her room without a word, and with that necklace around her throat, anyone could see and know just how gravely she’d been punished. If this censure stuck, her future as a warrior would be over, regardless of whether she managed to win Ranma over in time. And it seemed Shampoo had managed to royally botch her chances at that.

But Shampoo had seldom been so coldly logical about her affection toward Ranma. Cologne had had more than one of her children or their children be compelled to marry a man from outside, but most of them had known better than to grow attached to their mates. If they attempted to seduce their targets, their deeds were calculated, deliberate affairs. Shampoo wasn’t like that. She let her heart’s desire get the best of her. That could be the only explanation for such a brazen attack on a rival.

And in that way, perhaps she and Cologne weren’t so different. Had Cologne been more rational and discerning, would they have been found out? Would she have realized Shampoo had lied to her or that Bindi had a means to expose them? Possibly. It was hard to dismiss the possibility that she’d made another mistake in judgment, as she had twenty years before.

To find peace between the Amazons and Sorcerers, who had long competed with one another for influence and prestige in the Jusenkyō Basin, Cologne had offered her granddaughter Ceruse to Prince Yi of the Sorcerers, heir to the Jade Throne. Ceruse was a good girl. She understood her duty all too well, and what Cologne ignored—or had failed to realize—was that Ceruse was desperately unhappy with the stuffy, neurotic Yi. Prone to fits of hypochondria and phobias of rodents and reptiles, the man could hardly have been easy to live with. For all his brilliance as an innovator in Sorcerer magic, crafting new spells and techniques to give his people power, Yi was an irritable man, and no Amazon woman could be happy putting up with what irritable men were wont to do.

All this Cologne knew from Ceruse’s letters. Every few weeks, couriers between the tribes had brought news to the Amazon village, along with Ceruse’s correspondence with her family and, in particular, her grandmother. Weary from the arguments with the Council, Cologne retired to her study and uncovered the stack of these letters—pieces of parchment that had become well-worn over the years. Ceruse would be diplomatic in describing her husband’s weaknesses and predilections, saying, “His collections of phlegm and other fluids are, I’m sure, just part of his curiosity in how the body works. Any preoccupation with disease on his part is really quite exaggerated.”

Such comments were the sad lowlights of Ceruse’s letters, and while Ceruse had endeavored to make herself into an ambassador and envoy from the Amazons to the Sorcerers, the girl seemed to be taking her unpleasant home life hard—or at least she had for the first few months. As the weeks passed, something about her tone changed.

“I’ve begun observing the training of the Sorcerer Guard,” she’d said, “and from their instructors, I’ve been able to pick up some simple spells. It seems all it takes is a fleeting pleasant thought and you can make your footsteps as light as falling feathers!”

No word on what that happy thought was, but Cologne didn’t dare ask in writing. What was the recourse of an unhappy wife when her husband was more interested in animal dissections and blood than his wife’s flesh? Cologne only prayed that Ceruse had the good sense not to get caught. Still, both sides surely recognized that it was better to have a loveless union than to expose an affair and put both tribes into strife once more. A bit of political tension was the worst Cologne expected, and for a period of around eight or nine months, even those fears seemed unwarranted.

Until Ceruse disappeared.

The news didn’t come to Cologne in one climactic moment—at least not at first. It started with an overdue letter here and an unusually evasive Sorcerer envoy there, but the more Cologne pressed and insisted on journeying to the Sorcerer village to see her granddaughter, the more the Sorcerers resisted. Finally, the truth came to light: Ceruse and Yi had both vanished, and thus far, despite Prince Captain Bailu’s efforts, there was not a trace of them to be found, no clue whether someone might’ve wished them harm, or any other news.

“Then you people have wasted enough time bumbling!” Cologne had cried, blasting the Sorcerers’ envoy. “I will go to your village myself to find her.”

But this the Sorcerers steadfastly refused. They were quite capable of managing their own affairs, and though the days passed with Ceruse and Yi still absent, they never backed down from this stance.

“It is the Sorcerer Guard’s solemn duty to see that the people are protected, and that includes my brother and his dear wife,” Bailu had written in a letter to the Council. “I will not rest until they are found or any culprit who might’ve had a hand in their disappearance is discovered, but this is the Guard’s burden to bear. While I understand your eagerness here, my people are best suited to unraveling this mystery.”

So the Amazons should stand pat while the Sorcerers did as they pleased? How could Cologne know that Yi and Ceruse hadn’t been taken and imprisoned in a political change of heart? To refuse to let even one Amazon set foot in the Sorcerer village was more than suspicious, and Cologne demanded answers. She wasn’t alone. The people supported her, too. That’s why she went before the Council as Second Speaker and made her position known:

“We should send a party to the Sorcerers for one last negotiation,” said Cologne, with the heat and light of the Council’s bonfire on her face, “and if they refuse to let us investigate this matter, we should take them captive until the Lady and the Prince Captain submit!”

The measure passed unanimously in a massive plume of white smoke. The Amazons would go to war, and early successes in the conflict brought them to the outskirts of the Sorcerer village itself until Bailu slaughtered hundreds of Amazons and Sorcerers alike with his ghastly, unholy spell. Cologne had been there to breathe in the ashes of the dead and look over the scarred river valley, yet at the time, Cologne didn’t mourn the loss of the dead. She mourned only that others might lose their nerve in this matter and give up on fighting, but even one person was worth fighting for, wasn’t she?

Apparently not. The Council voted to withdraw from the Sorcerer village and return home at once, and the vote wasn’t even close. That burned Cologne, and she made her feelings on the matter entirely clear:

“Everyone knew what their magic was capable of when we set out to start this war,” Cologne had said. “Now that we’ve endured the brunt of their power, _we_ are the ones who buckle and falter? They have nothing left! We were breaching the settlement above the waterfall! We must send more!”

But the rest of the Council didn’t agree. Prime among them was the Third Speaker of the time, Bindi.

“How many more?” she asked, cutting right to the point. “We have responsibilities to all our people, all our families. There will be no one left to find your granddaughter if we recklessly let ourselves be cut down. Frankly, I’m shocked you are so comfortable that so many men and women have died for your vendetta. Do you think anything of what it’s cost?”

Of course she did, but blood was blood, and for the sake of blood, Cologne resigned from the Council in the face of its insistence on retreating, and she looked for other ways to lead a party back to the Sorcerer village, but none of them amounted to anything. The Sorcerers bottled themselves in a magic barrier from which no scout ever returned, and over the years, the Amazons stopped standing vigil for their emergence—at least, until now. And Cologne, too, realized she had made a mistake. Cologne had misjudged Ceruse and asked too much of her, and over the years, her wish to make amends had isolated her. Even now, was she pursuing control of the Amazons’ forces for the good of the village? For Ranma’s sake? Or for the small, small chance of finding out what happened to Ceruse?

As certain as the old woman could be, she herself had no answer to that, but seeing Shampoo’s bedroom door implacably shut, Cologne realized she’d repeated a tragic mistake. Just as Ceruse’s burden was impossible to bear, so was Shampoo’s, and as long as the girl suffered with the Choker of Silence around her neck, unable to lift a hand in Ranma’s defense, that burden would consume her until there was nothing left.

  


Though she would have to see Akane and Ukyō back to Japan in the wee hours of the morning, Cologne didn’t have the heart to retire early. Memories of past and present failings stayed with her, and she sat with a bottomless pot of tea to think on her conundrum. There had to be some maneuver she hadn’t considered, some means to fix this for Shampoo that had escaped her, but she couldn’t see how.

Thanks to her restlessness, Cologne was wide awake when a frantic knocking came from the door.

“Who the hell is it?” she called out.

“Teacher, it’s me.”

Cologne opened the door, scrutinizing the Third Speaker with a wary look. “What now, Surma? The girls have until first light to depart. Or has Bindi decided to silence them, too?”

“No, no. I’ve come here on my own. While the Council has done what ought to be done according to law, that does not mean the law is just thanks to blind obedience. What happened in open session today—that was unusual.”

“That’s putting it charitably,” said Cologne.

“Indeed. I would be negligent in my duty as Third if I did not investigate it. The First and Second Speakers forbade that anyone see the Kunō boy. They clearly wished that you never speak to him.”

“They assumed I didn’t know what Shampoo had done to Tendō. They were almost right.”

Surma shook her head. “I know the First and Second Speakers well. They don’t like to assume facts they can verify instead.”

That much Cologne thought true, too. Bindi was meticulous by nature; it would be some risk to go just on Kunō’s word. Had she sent someone to spy on Cologne, hoping to determine if Cologne knew the truth? No, not possible. Cologne had been too careful for that.

But others in her family might not be so methodical. With two fingers, she motioned to Surma to follow and headed back to her study. Her letters from Ceruse, old and yellowed with the passage of time, she put aside. Instead, she retrieved from a shelf another stack, this set newer and fresher.

“I write to Shampoo’s mother from time to time, reporting on her progress with Ranma and to hear about things back home,” Cologne explained. “I did not know what Shampoo had done, but I did notice her disquiet.” Cologne removed a letter from the stack and squinted. “Here, March 20: ‘Shampoo came home today bruised and crippled. I’m certain she’s been in a fight, but she won’t say what about or why. She will heal quickly, as she always does, but I can think of few people who could’ve inflicted such wounds, one of them being my would-be Ranma himself. Still, I cannot fathom this has to do with him. She is just as devoted to him as ever, and fighting him wouldn’t relieve her of her obligations under the law.’ ” Cologne scoffed, shaking her head. “How could I have been so blind? I knew right away it had something to do with Ranma, but I just didn’t believe it.”

“I wouldn’t be concerned with that right now, Teacher,” said Surma, who thumbed through the stack of letters. “Tell me, are all of these letters in order?”

“You’d have to ask my granddaughter that. Why?”

Surma showed her the stack. “Shouldn’t March 20th’s letter come _after_ March 13th’s? Not before?”

Cologne eyed the bundle of letters. Sure enough, with the envelope in question sticking out of the stack, it was painfully clear. There were two letters on top of it—March 13th’s and March 27th’s—while all the others were strictly arranged by date.

“That’s it,” said Cologne, grinning. “We have them.”

Speaker Surma frowned. “This is hardly proof, Teacher.”

“This is proof enough for me, and proof enough that Bindi has something to fear. You must excuse me, Surma. I have work to do here.”

“So quick you are to dismiss me,” mused the Third Speaker. “I thought I could be of some help here.”

“You sit on the Council. That places upon you certain responsibilities.”

“What do you mean? Did you know Shampoo was hiding something so important after all?”

“Do you really wish to ask me that?”

Surma sighed. “I see. Well, I don’t know what you intend, Teacher, and perhaps it is best I don’t. If you do manage to bring this plot to light, it will be for the good of the Tribe, and that will ultimately be for the best. Be well, Teacher Cologne.”

“Thank you, Surma.”

With a respectful nod, Speaker Surma slipped out the study room, and Cologne let out a sigh as she left. Surma was a dedicated, principled woman, and thankfully, she was smart enough to know that doing right by the people of the Tribe required some flexibility at times, but what Cologne had in mind went well beyond a slight bending of protocol and rules.

Cologne spent the night preparing her evidence, and she kept the study door locked to fend off any unexpected visitors. She sprinkled dark, powdery dust over the envelope, even as the irritant stung her eyes. At last, when a pattern of loops and whorls emerged on the envelope’s backing, Cologne was ready.

  


As dawn approached, Cologne ventured forth from her home, evidence in hand. She strolled past the stone playing table where the First and Second Speakers had exchanged banter over a game of chess, and her destination wasn’t much further from that. She came up the walk to a grand, regal house, one with a hilltop view of the river, and rapped noisily on the door with her walking stick. The light of a candle moved within the home, and the old woman who held it was none to amused to see Cologne.

“State your business or leave my family be,” said Speaker Bindi wearily, watching Cologne through tired, bloodshot eyes. “I’m in no mood to listen to you whine.”

“I know what you did,” said Cologne. “You rifled through my letters. You interrogated the Kunō boy, and when you realized he knew something I didn’t, you kept him hidden. You and Thanaka actively worked to keep the truth from me. More than that, you _wanted_ Shampoo to invoke the Last Right and be discredited. That’s not the proper role for Speakers. People accuse me of impropriety; what will they say about you?”

Bindi sneered. “You can prove nothing, and I needn’t listen to idle threats. The Kunō boy was sequestered for his own protection. He would’ve ventured out on his own to pursue Saotome Ranma and started a war all on his own.”

“Then how do you explain this?” Cologne showed her the back of the envelope, where a pristine black thumbprint was evident, outlined in powder. “Whose thumb is this, Bindi? Yours? Thanaka’s? Or is it just some lackey’s?”

For once, the imposing First Speaker was held silent, and her angered glare told Cologne all she needed to know.

“It’s true this might not be enough, but I can take this before the Nine and see what they think of this. There is a hint of taint here, Bindi. I know it. Surma will speak to it, and the Nine will have to consider the question: does someone like you truly speak for them? Do the Three truly speak for the Nine, or do they not? The vote is anonymous; you will never know who may vote against you, and if just one person votes against you, it will be a stain on your leadership. Others will take note, and it will damage you. Your tenure as an effective First Speaker will end, and then, you’ll have nothing. I can destroy you, Bindi, but if you resist, at least you will have stuck to principle. Make your choice, First Speaker, and hope Thanaka doesn’t betray you. I know he enjoys the position he holds, too.”

With that, Cologne turned her back on Bindi, and with her walking stick to guide her, she headed back down the path.

“Wait.”

Cologne glanced over her shoulder, nonplussed.

“What do you want from me?” asked Bindi.

“Send a party,” said Cologne, “with Shampoo in the lead, her censure revoked.”

Bindi scoffed. “After such blatant disregard for the Council’s authority? Impossible. I won’t ask that of the Nine and jeopardize my position with the mere suggestion. If Shampoo wants that choker around her neck removed, she must earn it.” Bindi sighed, deflating, and she looked to the horizon and the coming dawn. “I will allow a war party, but if you want control of the war party, lead it yourself. Take her with you if you wish, and she can clear herself of shame in doing service for the Tribe.” Looking ten years older, Speaker Bindi gazed past Cologne to the sunrise. “Go now. Leave me be. You’ve taken what you wanted, and I accept that for now. But I swear, if you bring us to disaster once again, Cologne, no power will stop me—”

“From what? What will you do? Go back inside, Bindi, and know that we are no different. Just as I have something I care about above all else, so do you. For me, it is blood. For you, it is power and influence. I do not judge you, Bindi. We want what we want, and we can only hope not to damage what we care for in the process. Give my regards to Thanaka when you see him.” 

As Speaker Bindi glared daggers at her, Cologne went back down the path, admiring the night sky as it retreated with the coming of the dawn. It had been a long time coming to see this quest of hers begin anew, and this time, she wouldn’t be the only one with something driving her that resisted all attempts to ignore it. In the course of trying to find and save Ceruse, she’d made mistakes, and Shampoo had done the same with Ranma. Perhaps that was the nature of people—to covet something to the exclusion of all else and err gravely in doing so. And like Shampoo, Cologne knew not how to keep that goal from getting the better of her.

When she returned to her doorstep, the visitors from Japan had gathered with their luggage and supplies. Ryōga and Konatsu bore heavy packs while Akane and Ukyō rested their suitcases at their sides. From the doorway, Shampoo looked out, the red Choker of Silence gleaming around her neck. They watched Cologne, curious and puzzled, but she took her time coming up the path, savoring the light of dawn.

“Go back inside,” she said. “The party to Jusenkyō leaves tomorrow morning, and I will be the one to command it, to save our people and Ranma, too. Rest up and gather your strength. Every hand will be needed to rescue him.”

At that, the girls looked to one another and began to nod in determination and resolve. As they headed back inside to put their things away, Cologne stopped at the threshold, waiting for them to finish. When the lower limb of the sun cleared the mountains in the distance, she put her hand in her pocket and took out a frayed patch of dyed silk—a two-decades-old testament to things left undone and unfinished.

There would be no more of that. She’d already decided that much, for beside the patch of Ceruse’s dress, she held up the letter to Shampoo’s mother and compared the fingerprint to her own thumb. Side by side, the match was clear. Bindi had feared Cologne’s threat for nothing. In pursuit of what she wanted, Cologne had committed a bold and brazen deception, and she wasn’t sorry for it. By the end of the week, the Amazons would make camp at the outskirts of Jusenkyō, and then, for good or ill, the effort to rescue Ranma would begin.


	5. Promises

In the great city of Ōsaka, Japan, the Dōton Canal—or _Dōtonbori_ —connected two parts of the Yohori River. This in itself would be fairly unremarkable, and indeed, when people spoke of Dōtonbori, they rarely meant the canal itself. A stretch of street between two bridges had long since taken on the name, too, and as an accident of history, Dōtonbori became a center of entertainment and attractions in the city. Time had changed the nature of its allure, as time is wont to do. In one era, it housed no shortage of fine women with reasonable rates for their services. In another, it was the Broadway of its time, but alas, the last of those theaters had fallen to American bombs many decades before.

But one trait of Dōtonbori continued to attract tourists from across Japan and the world over—the great variety and quality of its cuisine.

What other place in the world would boast an eight-story restaurant or twenty-four-hour ramen in three different places along the street, headlined by giant three-dimensional billboards with dragons? But beyond traditional dishes, such as sushi and octopus dumplings, or foreign-influenced fried chicken, there was one dish of utmost importance in the area:

Okonomiyaki.

It was in search of okonomiyaki that Kuonji Ukyō wandered along Dōtonbori, far west from her own shop in Tōkyō. Dōtonbori was a flashy, extravagant place, representative of all the city in that way. Above the street, many and varied displays lured the unsuspecting visitor to their sponsors’ stores. A sprinter raced on a digital track, coasting to the sweet smell of fresh caramel. Down the road, a mechanical crab wriggled its legs and closed its pincers, as if the aroma of hot butter sent shivers down its shell.

Those were long-standing, iconic restaurants on the street, but there was room for upstarts and newcomers, too. Successful businessmen hoping to make greater names for themselves—they would most covet an establishment on Dōtonbori. It was the stuff any aspiring entrepreneur would strive for. From the first moment he pushed a griddle and cart around, cooking okonomiyaki on the sidewalk for the hungry masses, he must’ve had his sights on a grander prize.

So it was with equal measures of anticipation and anxiety that Ukyō looked upon a two-story restaurant near the eastern end of Dōtonbori. With simple black curtains and a sliding, paper door, it bore no small resemblance to Ukyō’s own shop, except where her name would’ve been, the sign read _Kuonji’s Okonomiyaki_ instead.

Ukyō snuck through the line that extended out the door. Inside, batter sizzled and popped over three sets of griddles. Guests eagerly awaited stools by the counters, and the chefs—performers in their own right—twirled their spatulas with flair and style.

“Hey!” The lead chef parted the crowd with his spatula. “You there!”

“Me?” said Ukyō.

“You’re the boss’s daughter, aren’t you? He’s been waiting for you.”

Ukyō looked about, but the dim lighting hid the rest of the room in muddled, formless shadow. “Where?”

“Upstairs, of course!” The lead chef jerked his head toward a faint, hidden stairwell in the corner. “He’s doing a show right now!”

Wasting no time, Ukyō wove between the griddles. She ran up the stairs to the first floor—a smaller, cozy dining area with a balcony overhanging the sidewalk. In the center, a bearded man wielded dual spatulas over his griddle. Under a white spotlight, he spun and juggled three okonomiyaki and caught them on separate plates, to the cheers and applause of his patrons. 

Ukyō circled around the griddle, pursing her lips in admiration and interest as her father worked. Near the far end of the counter, she found a stool reserved with a plain white card. Doubtless it was meant for her, and as soon as she took her seat, the bearded chef poured out batter on the griddle in front of her.

“Strange,” she said. “I don’t remember ordering.”

“Call it a chef’s intuition,” said the man. “Or a father’s. I’m glad you’ve finally taken up my invitation to visit, Ukyō. What do you think of my shop?”

“It’s big and flashy, which seems to be the trend around here.”

Kuonji sprinkled cheese and seaweed flakes over the batter. “When you build a business in this place, you have to do a little something to match the atmosphere. Make no mistake: I want this business to be successful.”

“What businessman doesn’t?”

“But I want it to be successful not just for myself, but for my family. That’s why I’m glad you’re here, Ukyō. I’d thought you would hold out in Tōkyō forever chasing after that boy. Now we can build up a business together, the way it should’ve been years ago.”

Ukyō winced. “My work in Tōkyō isn’t finished.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. I need to be leaving Japan for a while. My finances won’t be able to take that. I need some help.”

“It has to do with that Saotome boy, doesn’t it.” Kuonji’s expression was intense and focused as he added shrimp and tuna to the meal. “My dear daughter, separated from me for ten years, refuses to come home because she doggedly pursues a debt of honor, no matter what else it may cost her.”

“You don’t think they owe us something?” Ukyō demanded. “If that cad Saotome Genma hadn’t stolen our cart, you would’ve had a place like this five years ago. This is business, Father. If you pay for something, you expect to get it. You don’t expect a promise to made in bad faith. The terms of the pact you make should be fulfilled. That’s the right thing to do.”

“So that’s why you stay away—you still hope that boy will marry you?”

“I do. We’re good friends, and once he starts getting serious about girls instead of getting all flustered around them, I think there’s potential between us.” Ukyō leaned closer, lowering her voice. “Look: Ranchan’s in trouble. At the very least, he’s been taken by some bad people, and as his friend, I need to go help him. I need to go save him. I won’t be left out of something important again.”

Kuonji shook his head. “How strange. I thought you hated him and his father, that you were out for their blood. And now you’re back to being chummy with them? To wanting to help them?”

“With Ranchan, not his father. His father can get hogtied to the back of a train and it probably isn’t half of what he deserves for being the conman he is. But Ranchan—Ranma—he’s a good guy. Why not do what friends do and help out?”

Kuonji turned the disc of batter over, letting it cook on the opposite side. “This isn’t how I imagined we’d see each other again. After I gave our cart to Saotome, I had little of my own, too. When you ran off, I spent what I had searching for you, but that didn’t last long. Soon I was stranded. I took a job as an assistant chef—at a buffet, of all things. I cut vegetables. I washed fruit. Only when the head chef was ill did I have a chance to show what I could do, and I did. Four years I labored for next to nothing. Three years I spent as head chef of that buffet in Kōbe, but even that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t my passion. It wasn’t my dream. I made friends with a customer there, one who happened to strike it rich. He bankrolled this restaurant in gratitude for all the meals I provided when he was just a working man. I’ve still yet to repay him in full. Money, daughter, does not come cheaply. I know you have only the shop you rent every month and a few sparse possessions. I heard you’d been ill; that can’t have been good for business. I don’t want anything material from you. All I wanted was to see my daughter again and build a legacy with her. Is that so much to ask?”

“No, Father.” Ukyō looked down, into her lap. “It isn’t.”

“But now, you’re going to go to who-knows-where for that boy. Is he really your friend, or is this part of a blind pursuit?”

“We’re close,” she said. “And I would give my life for him. Is that wrong, Father? Is it wrong to come here and ask for your blessing?”

With the okonomiyaki going crisp on the hot plate, Kuonji handed Ukyō a small spatula with golden trim around the handle. “No, it’s not wrong. Whether I can condone this path you’ve chosen is one thing, but you are my daughter, Ukyō, and a father should give his daughter support. Go on and see to your friend, whatever else you may want him to be to you. But I won’t give you, or lend you, any money.”

“Father!”

“I propose something else: I’ll send staff to your restaurant in Tōkyō instead. That is my only request: that we use this as an opportunity to renew a relationship as partners, as family. You’ve been away from me for too long; as successful as this business has been, it means nothing to me without family, without a legacy, to share it with. Allow me this, my daughter. Make it so it won’t be ten years before I see you again. That is all I ask.”

Ukyō broke off a piece of her father’s okonomiyaki with the gold-trimmed spatula and savored the mixture of shrimp, cheese, and other flavors. It took her back to the days of riding around with her father and his cart, traveling the countryside to make a living, and at that moment, the prospect of seeing her father again, once Ranma was safe and they could return home, sounded just fine by her.

  


One week later, Ukyō’s journey took her to the outskirts of Jusenkyō, the place where Sorcerers held Ranma behind their maze of magic. In the fertile woods around the spring ground, the Amazons made their camp, with animal skin tents peppered about the landscape as far as the eye could see. They were a diligent and hardworking people, at least to Ukyō’s eye, for they spent their days crafting weapons and other useful materials from the local trees, rocks, and whatever else they could scavenge.

Were that their defining trait, she might’ve found them easier to get along with, but the Amazons had a hard edge to them, too. At any given time, Ukyō could look about the camp and find two Amazons dueling furiously, trading blows with blunt weapons or even swinging blades around that glistened from their sharp, cutting edges. The Amazons didn’t hesitate to practice fighting, even with lethal consequences, and of all the Amazons there, Shampoo was the most fervent in proving her worth. With the red Choker of Silence around her neck, she was utterly mute around her people, but she could challenge any one of them without saying a word. She didn’t always win—particularly against those warriors older and stronger than her—but she never failed to put up a good fight, enough that the other Amazons were disgusted with themselves for letting her hang so close or win. Eventually, they stopped accepting her challenges, but Shampoo kept training, even on her own, with cold, single-minded fury. It was written all over her face, and her expression made Ukyō cringe just at the sight.

As dire as the situation was—the Amazons had tried for days to breach the Sorcerers’ magic barrier, to no avail—Ukyō preferred a more patient approach. If there were action, she wouldn’t want to be sore and beat from continuous training. She woke up an hour after dawn and spent the better part of the morning preparing a good meal—or at least, her closest approximation to one. If rabbit stew were all she could put together, then under the circumstances, it would have to do. It was a relief to be cooking, even out in the wilds. More than the martial ones, culinary arts were an inextricable part of her identity. Even when she’d set her sights on finding Ranma and Genma and punishing them for what they’d done, preparing food was her constant in life. She couldn’t give it up, not even to be a better woman for Ranma.

Then again, perhaps what Ranma had needed all along wasn’t a better woman but a better _person_ at his side.

“Ukyō, I’ve got some of those herbs you wanted.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Ukyō found the newcomer: Akane. The Tendō girl, with a headband holding her hair out of her eyes, had gone running through the forest at the crack of dawn. Granted, Ukyō was no stranger to an early morning herself, but since she and Akane had shared a tent, she’d grown too accustomed to Akane’s early bird habits. All in all, though, it was really unavoidable. There were only so many tents between them. Indeed, just next door to them, Konatsu was sharing a tent with Ryōga and Mousse, just out of propriety’s sake.

Besides that, watching over Akane was, for Ukyō, a non-negotiable point.

“Bring those over,” said Ukyō, motioning to Akane to come closer. “Here, look at these stems. They don’t have the right color, and they have these bands going up the sides. These aren’t herbs, Akane-chan. They’re weeds.”

“What? It can’t be.” Akane squinted, studying the plants in her palm. “I could’ve sworn they smelled and looked just like you said. I even tasted them, and they were…”

“Ah, ah, I wouldn’t—”

Akane snapped one of the stems in two and sucked on the end, promptly going cross-eyed. “That’s definitely _not_ an herb.”

“First thing a chef does when she comes to a place is identify the local ingredients,” said Ukyō. “Not everyone has an eye for it.”

“Or the touch for it. I’ll bet you never tried to microwave a hard-boiled egg.”

Ukyō scoffed. “Of course not. You’d only do that if you were trying to rig an improvised bomb.”

Akane chuckled nervously.

“You’re not saying—”

“Guilty,” said Akane. “The door to the microwave almost took Ranma’s head off.”

Wincing, Ukyō put all her attention back on the stew, stirring gently. “We all start in different places?”

“That’s putting it kindly.” Akane looked out, into the forest. At the end of her gaze was a line of Amazon warriors, who formed a perimeter around the unbreached Sorcerer barrier. Sighing, Akane sat down on a log to Ukyō’s right. “It all seems so small now,” she said. “With Ranma stuck in there, all those petty squabbles and fights seem really pointless, like I was just wasting time I didn’t appreciate.”

“We’ll get him out,” Ukyō insisted. “That’s what Ranchan would say, isn’t it? He wouldn’t even hesitate to say so, and neither should we. Then we can all go back to being petty and stubborn teenagers in no time.”

Akane laughed. “That’s one way to put it, but you’re right about that. We have to be strong for him, the way he’d be strong for any of us.”

It was an expression of quiet confidence and hope—both things they needed right then—but Ukyō knew they weren’t in Akane’s character. The youngest Tendō sister could be stubborn and overconfident or sorely insecure and worrying. She was an intense person, but she ultimately meant well, and if anything, this time since Ranma had left Japan had shown one thing: Akane could feel regret. Were they not both interested in Ranma, they could’ve been good friends.

Instead, Ukyō was merely obligated to keep up with her.

A shout erupted through the camp, rousing Ukyō from her thoughts. All around, the Amazons began to take up arms. Dozens of them scurried north, around the perimeter of the front lines. Shampoo, with her two maces in hand, ran after the growing group of Amazons, and like a hound after a prized fox, Mousse dashed after her in pursuit. “Wait for me, Shampoo!”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute!” Ukyō tossed a pair of spatulas on a string after him, wrapping Mousse up and holding him fast. “Slow down; what’s going on?”

“Let me go, Kuonji! This is important!”

“And Akane-chan and I are clueless because we don’t speak Chinese. What’s the deal?”

“What do you think? It’s Sorcerers! Get your weapons and let me go!”

Ukyō eased up on the strings, and Mousse disentangled himself from her spatulas.

“Mousse,” said Akane, “show me the way?”

“Of course. Over here.”

Ukyō’s eyes widened. “Wait—wait a minute, Akane-chan! Give me a minute. I’ve got to take this pot off the fire, get my big spatula…”

But Akane and Mousse were already off, running in the footsteps of Shampoo and the other Amazons.

“Damn that girl,” Ukyō muttered under her breath, and she kicked some dirt over the campfire to extinguish it. She scampered into their tent, retrieving her large battle spatula, and went to follow the rest of the war party. Honestly, what was Akane thinking—running off with nothing but her own two fists to fight magic-wielding Sorcerers? At least the Amazons had bows, swords, maces, and armor. If Akane had one flaw, that was it: she could run into situations way beyond her. In a business, that would cost money and force an inept entrepreneur bankrupt.

Here, it might get her killed.

With her large battle spatula in one hand, Ukyō arrived on the scene, finding a standoff between Amazon archers, who took cover behind logs and rocks, but there was no sighting of Sorcerers or anyone else. Ukyō joined Akane behind a tree trunk, which was as far as either of them dared to look out. “What’s going on?” asked Ukyō.

“We sent six men into the illusion,” explained Cologne. “Tethered by ropes to the trees here, so they wouldn’t lose their way.” She pointed out a cut coil of rope around the tree trunk where Ukyō and Akane hid. “It seems they were found out.”

“Then we go in and save our people,” said Shampoo, borrowing a bow to stand watch with.

“If the Sorcerers have realized our presence, they can attack from that veil of magic and retreat with impunity. We must be cautious, and cautious is what we will be. Look and listen. I doubt the Sorcerers will let this stand for long.”

In deadly silence, the Amazons maintained their vigil outside the Sorcerers’ illusion. It was nerve-wracking to stand there, waiting and watching yet doing nothing. Ukyō’s heart pounded, making her jittery, and it was all she could do to stand there, making not a sound, until a cry came out, ringing through the camp.

“Movement!”

Shampoo’s bowstring pulled taut, and Mousse let out a length of chain, glinting with barbs and razors just for this occasion. From the thicket, the maze of trees, shadows stirred in the mist. Hands on their heads, five Amazons trudged back to camp, guided by the heavy iron tips of battle staves.

“Hold!” said Cologne. “They have our people; hold!”

The prisoners dropped to their knees. A Sorcerer for each held them at staff-point, and in the center, a girl stepped forward. With dark, reddish-brown hair, she pressed the weight on her staff into her prisoner’s neck and looked up, calling to her enemies.

“Who among you speaks for your people?” she said.

Cologne waved her walking stick from behind a tree trunk. “I do,” she said.

“If you enter the Maze again, your lives will be forfeit,” said the leader, the captain. “We return your people to you as a measure of good faith. We are using the spring ground. Do not trespass.”

Peeking out, Cologne eyed the returned men. “That is not all of our people you’ve taken this time, Sorcerer. There are others.”

“They will be returned when our business here is finished,” said the leader. “Not before.”

“And your business involves Saotome Ranma?”

The leader narrowed her eyes. “Who is that?”

“The young Japanese boy you’ve taken. Surely you realized he doesn’t belong in this land.”

“She is not your concern,” said the leader. “She will be released with the rest of your people only when we are done with them, no sooner.”

“And if I refuse these terms? Perhaps I’d like to negotiate with someone with more clout. You’re practically a child. Who commands your loyalty? Where is your captain? I want to speak with Bailu. Isn’t he still around?”

“There is no one more senior than me. I am Captain of the Guard, and I command the people—and magic—in line with that position.”

“Then prove it, young captain! You will make a fine hostage of my own to take. Archers, fire!”

The prisoners ducked a volley of arrows, but the Captain slammed her staff in the dirt, and the shafts evaporated, withering in the face of the captain’s golden magic shell. And when the last archer had emptied her quiver trying to bring the captain down, the wall of the barrier expanded with brutal, relentless force. It picked up the captured Amazons; it shoved dirt, rocks and debris in its wake.

“Akane-chan, down!” Ukyō caught and tackled Akane, pinning her to the ground, and the wave rode over them. Small stones and twigs bombarded Ukyō’s back, and the pressure forced her ribs against Akane’s.

When the wave subsided, Ukyō rolled to her back, ears ringing. Slowly, the Amazons cleaned themselves of soil and loose bark, but where Shampoo’s people struggled to get back on their feet, the Captain of the Guard stood still, her staff in hand, with not a hair on her head out of place.

“We did not have a quarrel until you decided to spy on us,” she said. “Leave now, and do not enter the Maze again, or we _will_ have a quarrel with you.”

With that, the Captain stepped back, into the illusion, and vanished between the trees.

  


Cologne’s stunt in challenging the Sorcerer captain carried a price—perhaps a small one, but a price nonetheless in bruises, cuts, and scrapes. Few Amazons came out of that debacle unscathed, and the Nerima party fared even worse. The Captain’s shockwave had snapped the tree trunk in front of them in two, and flying chunks of that tree had given even Ryōga cause to cradle his side and wince. By far, he was the toughest of them all, and the rest of them were lucky not to be knocked out or maimed—at least, that was Ukyō’s opinion. To have attacked so suddenly, so rashly, was unconscionable, and she let Cologne know it.

“What were you thinking?” she roared while Konatsu dabbed at her scrapes with rubbing alcohol. “You could’ve at least tried to clue some of us in that you were going to attack!”

Her eyes narrow and beady, Cologne hunched over, bearing a firm grip on her walking stick and with a small cut over her eye for her trouble. “This is war, Kuonji. We all know the risks. Do you?”

“Of course!”

Konatsu touched a scrape on her elbow with a ball of cotton, and Ukyō winced as the rubbing alcohol’s sting took hold. Though it was unpleasant, the sudden pain gave her pause—and time to take in the situation and surroundings. The group had gathered back near their tents, with the Amazons already clearing debris from the perimeter of the illusion. Ryōga was practically hovering over Akane, and if he’d been any more meticulous about searching her skin for wounds, it would’ve been obscene.

“Liking what you see there?” Mousse cracked. That had Ryōga frozen for a good five seconds as he babbled some excuse to justify his attention.

Across from them sat Shampoo, who had already tended to her own injuries, refusing help from Mousse or Cologne. The holes and rips in her outfit she left unpatched, and the Choker of Silence around her neck glittered in the morning sun. All in all, they’d survived, and that counted for something. Once the pain of the alcohol cleared, Ukyō met Cologne’s gaze once again, this time more calmly.

“I’m just saying it’d be nice to be on the same page,” she said. “I mean, I went to all the trouble to prepare six different kinds of batter for whatever situations we might face—sticky, explosive, slippery, heat-absorbing, you name it. If I’d known we were going break in attack, I could’ve used one of them.”

Ryōga raised an eyebrow. “Heat-absorbing batter?” he echoed. “Isn’t that exactly what batter is?”

“Shampoo come to fight,” said the Amazon with the red choker around her neck, “not to bake snacks on battlefield.”

Ukyō rolled her eyes. “Maybe baking snacks is the way I fight. If we face one of those flamethrowing bird-men like before, what are you going to do?”

“That won’t be an issue,” Akane said quietly. “As far as I know, there was only one Saffron, and Ranma killed him to save us—to save me.”

“Indeed, we must focus our efforts on the enemies in front of us, not the ones from the past.” Cologne started drawing in the dirt around the campfire, creating a narrow, deep mark with her walking stick. “If the Sorcerers wished us eradicated from this place, they would’ve brought great force. This new captain of theirs is no Bailu. Her mercy speaks of weakness, and that is what I sense now. We will have to stand vigil overnight, to make sure no Sorcerers overfly the camp, while we work on a new strategy. It seems clear the Sorcerers know when we are within their illusion, so we must penetrate it quickly, before they can respond.”

“You have something in mind for that?” asked Ryōga.

“Indeed. Tell me—how far can you throw a spear?”

The idea was simple: while no man could navigate the Maze on his own, and a whole party could spend years in there and never escape, all that was needed was some kind of guide or anchor to the outside world. The Maze around the Sorcerer village was too large to penetrate this way, but at Jusenkyō, it might be just thin enough.

For the rest of the day, the strongest Amazons took up spears with rope tied on as tethers and practiced hurling, like Olympians at the javelin throw. Ryōga joined them, putting up impressive numbers in terms of distance thrown, but his spears had the remarkable tendency to drift from their intended marks. When one of them sliced through a large tent of Amazons, Cologne could only keep him away from the rest of the spears for the day.

“Honestly,” she’d muttered, “it must be quite a curse you bear, Hibiki Ryōga, if even everything you touch gets lost.”

Ryōga wasn’t alone in this effort. Shampoo, with her own strength, could hurl a spear a good and long distance, perhaps three-fourths as far as Ryōga could, and with better accuracy. Mousse, on the other hand, quickly resorted to his arsenal of hidden weapons. First, he tried a long chain to spin a ball on a rope and let it fly, but as he spun around, he lost control, and it was all anyone in the camp could do to duck before the chain cut them down in two.

The plus side of this fiasco was that there’d be plenty of lumber from the felled trees.

“Mousse will get brothers and sisters killed before we fight one Sorcerer,” Shampoo observed, shaking her head.

Beyond the three of them, the others in the Nerima party played a smaller part. Konatsu had become enamored with the idea of playing nurse to Ukyō, and he went running around the camp in a pristine white nurse’s outfit, tending the wounded with a smile.

“Isn’t that a bit strange?” Akane wondered aloud. “Taking a costume on a trip like this?”

“He _is_ a ninja,” Ukyō pointed out. “I saw him take a whole suitcase of costumes with him—police officer uniforms, clown suits, even a tuxedo like something out of a spy movie. Makes me wonder if there’s a lucky girl he’s going to wear that one for.”

Akane laughed nervously at that but said nothing.

For her part, Ukyō took up a spear once, but seeing she was hardly at half the distance others were covering, she decided it’d be fruitless to spend all day practicing when strength should be conserved for the battle to come. Akane wasn’t so restrained, spending half the day throwing spears over the forest. She shouted to the high heavens just to get a few more ounces of strength from her arms, buying maybe fifteen meters of distance for her effort, but she was still well short of Ryōga’s mark, or Shampoo’s. Yet still she ran out again and again, trying to push a little harder each time. If nothing else, the girl was stubborn.

And that stubbornness could put her in jeopardy.

By late afternoon, the Amazons started getting a lick of sense, and on Cologne’s order, they rested—some of them, anyway. There seemed to be some commotion over the heavy siege weapons that had arrived a few days after war party made camp, but Ukyō didn’t see how those weapons would matter, or even what they could be used for. The forest around Jusenkyō was thick, and it made the passage of heavy vehicles difficult. Still, Cologne oversaw this last-second hammering and nailing, which proceeded past dusk at a frantic pace. The only person still crazy enough to be out—aside from the builders—was Akane, who practiced various kicks and punches to the light of their campfire.

“Aren’t you just a little tired?” asked Ukyō, peeking out of her tent from the warmth of her sleeping bag.

Akane thrust her knee forward, striking the gut of an imaginary foe. “I don’t think I could sleep. I just keep thinking Ranma’s in there somewhere, and I’m not ready.”

“Staying up all night trying to push yourself won’t help.”

“Maybe it won’t tomorrow, but at least right now, I can focus on breathing and technique, instead of anything else.”

“Like what happens if we don’t find him? If we don’t rescue him?”

Akane wiped at her brow, nodding. “Yeah. If it all comes down to a matter of seconds—between getting him back and losing him—I don’t want to feel like there was something more I could’ve done.”

“There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way, but you’ve got to be smart about it. What would Ranchan say if he saw you doing this right now?”

“He’d say I’m pushing myself too hard.” Akane pursed her lips in contemplation. “I’m not sure he’d even want me here.”

Clearly this conversation wasn’t going to wrap itself up in a tidy bow anytime soon. Ukyō unzipped the sleeping bag and sat upright in the cover of the tent. “What makes you say that?”

Standing by the fire, Akane looked out to the horizon and folded her arms, shivering. “Well, if Ranma _were_ here, he’d want to do things himself. Or maybe he’d ask Mousse and Ryōga-kun to go along, because they’re strong like he is. When the Phoenix people took Shampoo, Ranma went off with those two and his father. He didn’t want me to come—he thought it’d be dangerous for me to get anywhere near this place.”

“He’s the one in trouble. He doesn’t get to tell you what to do now.”

“No, but he was concerned, and his reasons haven’t changed, even though he’s not here. Have I ever told you about when we first met?”

Ukyō shook her head.

“It was raining that day, so Ranma was a girl at the time, right? And I think he felt it’d be embarrassing to reveal his curse, and he didn’t want to stay long, so he just pretended to be a girl.”

“A girl who was supposed to marry you?” joked Ukyō.

“Father fainted at the thought!” Akane laughed. “But anyway, I’d heard Ranma was a martial artist, and I asked him to spar. Even back then, he was so good I couldn’t even touch him, and he didn’t bother fighting back. He just dodged and dodged until I finally threw a punch into the wall in frustration, and he poked me on the back of the head. That really showed me the gap between me and him was so big, and even up to now, I haven’t been able to close it, not very much at least. Ranma knows that. He thinks I need to be protected, and he’s probably right. It’s not smart, being here, but it’s something I have to do.”

“Because you had a part in making him go.”

Akane jolted at that, like her heart had stopped in her chest.

“So did Shampoo,” said Ukyō. “And so did I. I let him down.”

“How’s that?”

Ukyō winced. “Never mind. I’m just saying—that’s what good and honest people do. They repay their debts. Trust me; I know all about that. Come tomorrow, we’re going to do whatever it takes to get Ranchan back, right?”

Nodding, a look of determination and sternness came over Akane. Gone was her creeping doubt and worry, and she met Ukyō’s gaze boldly. “Right!” she said, and she put out the campfire, heading into the tent to get some sleep. Ukyō was grateful for that—it was hard enough to settle in and rest with Akane constantly grunting and shouting out there. It seemed all the girl had needed was a little encouragement, for no sooner did Ukyō blink than Akane was in her sleeping bag and out like a light. Ukyō scooted away from Akane, lest the girl’s violent tossing and turning give Ukyō a black eye, but it was a start. She’d put Akane’s fears to bed.

And in doing so, she’d emboldened Akane to go into harm’s way, something Ranma never would’ve wanted. She could’ve just as easily told Akane to be realistic, to leave this fight to others who could withstand it. It would’ve made the girl despondent and unhappy—or maybe she would’ve tried all the more to prove herself able—but at least she’d be unquestionably safe.

Still, Ukyō shut her eyes and hoped to forget her dreams overnight. In the end, it was Akane’s decision to make. Ukyō had just given her own opinion, and she shouldn’t care one way or the other what Akane chose to do.

Regardless of what harm might come to Akane in the battle to come.

  


A morning tremor stirred Ukyō from her slumber. It was barely light, and Ukyō fished through her belongings for a flashlight and switched it on. With the rumbling of the earth, even the dirt on her sleeping bag jittered.

“I guess that’s our wake-up call,” mused Ukyō. She reached over, nudging Akane. “You still here?”

“Mm, yeah.” Akane rubbed at her eyes. “What’s going on?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Ukyō climbed out of her sleeping bag, finding herself surprisingly awake and alert. There was going to be a battle; she needed to be prepared. She filled her bandolier full of throwing spatulas. She cleaned off the edges of her battle spatula and tied a half-dozen batter bombs to her belt. This cold and methodical preparation routine gave her shivers.

“You okay?” asked Akane.

“Yeah, fine, it’s just…” She felt the edge of a throwing spatula. “I haven’t been this prepared for a fight since I went to track down Ranma.”

“You really must’ve wanted to punish him.”

There was no denying that. She’d spent ten long years abandoning her femininity, training by the sea (which turned out a pointless exercise, considering the salt air and spray had a tendency to ruin whatever she cooked), yearning for the day when she’d track down Ranma and Genma and avenge the dishonor she’d been dealt. She’d abandoned her father and let that resentment and hurt burn within her.

But Ranma had welcomed her back into his life as a friend—and maybe something more. All that hate and loathing evaporated, almost overnight, and while they hadn’t yet gone beyond friendship, she was happy, happier than she ever had been in the years since Genma ran off with her father’s cart. All that anger had isolated her, made her cold and ruthless. To go into battle and feel that way again was nothing she looked forward to, even if done in Ranma’s name.

With packets of flour and tempura flakes tied to her belt, Ukyō looked out the tent, into the twilight. “Come on,” she told Akane. “Let’s see what’s up.”

The two girls left their tent, finding Mousse, Konatsu, and Ryōga outside. Shampoo stood further off, by herself, with her maces strapped to her back. The ground rattled, and Ukyō swayed slightly on her feet.

“What’s happening?” asked Ukyō. “I thought you guys were going to help find us a way in.”

“We will,” said Ryōga, “but the old woman is organizing something to help out. Have a look.”

He pointed up the slope, away from the Sorcerers’ barrier. At the top of a small ridge, a series of wooden ballistae gathered, with warriors pushing them into position and the ground rumbling with the group’s movement. Amazons trudged up the ridge with mammoth iron bolts—the missile weapons the ballistae would launch when the time for war came.

Ukyō looked to Mousse out of the corner of her eye, watching the ballistae roll into position. “You guys don’t mess around, do you?”

“When it comes to Sorcerers, no,” he said.

With the ballistae lined up behind them, the Nerima party moved up to the perimeter, where the bulk of the Amazons amassed. With Cologne at their head, the warriors brought swords and bows to bear. It was a tense few minutes while the last few ballistae were armed and loaded, and Ryōga, Mousse, and Shampoo headed to the back to retrieve their spears, but at last, sunlight streamed through the forest around Jusenkyō, and it was at that first crack of dawn that Cologne raised her walking stick, silencing the whispers of the crowd.

“Come, brothers and sisters,” said Cologne, standing at the edge of the Maze. “The time of the Amazons is at hand. Do you stand ready to defend the Tribe?”

The Amazons shouted, thrusting their weapons into the air, and Ukyō readied her battle spatula, holding it firm with two hands. She looked to her right. “You ready?” she asked Akane.

“I’ll have to be. For Ranma’s sake, I’ll have to be.”

True enough; at that point, there was no chance to turn back. Amazons surrounded them on all sides. The party would push forward, and the only choice was to move with them.

“Dawn breaks, and with the first light comes the tide of battle,” cried Cologne. “Let us tarry no longer; warriors, pull!”

The ballistae strained and torqued, hurling a volley of heavy bolts overhead. Individual warriors threw their own spears to join the barrage, and the ropes their spears carried fell to the earth for others to pick up and follow. A rope dropped from the sky at Ukyō’s feet, and she picked it up, offering a hand-hold for Akane, too. The war party stalled at first, but as more and more warriors found a guide rope to lead them in, the group trickled forward. It was a slow process, and for that, the procession into the Maze was deathly quiet. To the untrained eye, the Maze was no different from an ordinary landscape. Indeed, that’s what Ukyō saw, too, but when she followed the trail of the rope with her eye, it seemed to do impossible things—winding about in coils and curves on the ground, leading nowhere at all. That was the illusion, not the forest around them. Ukyō kept her head down, looking only at the rope in her hands, and inched forward with careful steps.

Still, there was a sense of urgency to the war party’s movements through the Maze, for Sorcerers could come at any time to catch them. They wouldn’t be safe until they’d reached the springs. So when Ukyō stepped beyond the tree line, into daylight, it was a profound relief. The ballista bolts lay about a hundred paces in from the forest, and the war party moved up there, with the first warriors on the scene huddling around and establishing a perimeter of defense. Two lines of archers moved to the front, the front line taking a knee while their comrades stood, so both lines could fire at any threat. Cologne herself paced at the front of the archers, eyeing the clear blue sky. When she was satisfied, she hopped onto a crate in the middle of the foothold camp, to call out for all her people to hear.

“They do not come for us yet, brothers and sisters!” she cried. “Go now and find the Sorcerers that channel the illusion. Find them and disrupt their concentration, so that we may bring our full numbers to bear!”

The Amazons split into three parties—one to penetrate the mountain and search there, two to scour the mountainside itself. Cologne herself would lead one of the mountainside parties, and Ukyō and the rest of the contingent from Nerima would go with her, alongside Shampoo and Mousse.

Thus, their journey into Jusenkyō was by no means finished, for the Amazon war party still had the bulk of the thousand springs to cross before reaching Mount Kensei. This too was treacherous, for though cutting across the springs was the most direct route, one wrong step could end in a disastrous curse.

“Are you sure we can’t take a small detour to find the Drowned Man spring?” asked Mousse, salivating over the pools around them. “I’m sure Ranma would understand.”

“Priorities, duck boy,” said Cologne, at the head of the pack. “There will be plenty of time to find the spring once we’ve rooted the Sorcerers out of this place.”

“You mean there will be plenty of time after we’ve marched them back to their village, right up to the waterfall, where the prince—”

Cologne whacked at Mousse with her walking stick, knocking him off balance. “Perhaps I need to douse you with water right now; a duck wouldn’t be nearly as much of a bother.”

Mousse stumbled, falling backward, and he landed on his rear with a—

THUD!

Cologne froze, holding up a clenched fist to stop the rest of the party. “What was that?”

Shampoo glanced out of the corner of her eye. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Mousse falling on ass?”

“He may have a lot up his sleeves, but Mousse isn’t _that_ heavy,” observed Akane. She put a hand to the ground, feeling the earth with her palm. “Is it something coming?”

Ukyō quickly glanced at the mountain, then back behind them. There was nothing obvious in sight, but the waters of the pools jittered, splashing and sloshing about.

“Akane-san, step back,” said Ryōga, coming between her and a nearby spring with his umbrella in hand. “If I must, I’ll protect you with my own body to keep you from being cursed.”

“That’s sweet of you to say, but what would happen if you end up cursed because of that?”

“Not much would change,” muttered Cologne.

Akane and Ukyō looked to each other. Just what was that supposed to mean?

KA-WHOOSH! A spring erupted, shooting upwards in a tower of curse water. Halfway down the spring ground, the column of water rose like a geyser, but it soon lost steam, collapsing back to the earth in a tainted shower. Amazons fled from the eruption site, fleeing to preserve their humanity against whatever might curse might fall.

“Move, double time, to the mountain!” cried Cologne. “They know we’re here!”

A brisk march across the grounds devolved into an all-out sprint. The three Amazon parties sprinted across the thousand springs, putting their safety and humanity on the line as the ground shook and rumbled underfoot. That wasn’t all, either: high in the sky, little specks floated, casting an array of devastating magic at the Amazons. Bamboo poles in the springs rose from their pools and rained back down at the invaders like missiles from orbit. Rays of frost iced over the ground, making the way across impossibly slick. With the earth moving unpredictably, Ukyō found herself on ice, coasting like a man on a hockey rink without skates. Most of the others leapt away to safety, but Akane floundered, waving her arms to try to keep balance.

“Hold on to me!” Ukyō caught Akane by the elbow and pulled gently to bring them together. “Don’t go coasting into a spring now!”

Akane glanced past her, in the direction they were sliding. “You know, about that—” She pointed meekly ahead at a set of bamboo poles, sticking out of a spring.

“Let’s go left—”

“Steer to the right—”

The girls pushed and pulled at each other, and their confused movements sent them tumbling to the ground. Ukyō banged her right shoulder on the ice, and the girls slid into the spring—

Landing on its frozen surface.

“Whew!” cried Akane. “Lucky!”

Finding the spring frozen over thanks to magic, yes. Seeing the cracks form in the surface from their landing spot, however…

Ukyō unclipped from her belt a can of springy noodles, and she hurled them like a rope away from the spring. “Need some help here!” she yelled. “Anybody got the footing to grab that?”

In a blur, Konatsu skipped over the icy ground, finding a patch of unfrozen earth. He took up the noodle rope, wrapping the end around his hand. “I’ve got you, Ukyō-sama! Get ready!”

Akane and Ukyō struggled to their feet, staying crouched to keep their centers of gravity low. Konatsu turned around and tugged on the noodle rope like an ox moving a cart. He pulled the girls out, and just in time too, for the waters under the frozen surface bubbled and frothed, breaking up the thin ice.

“We need these Sorcerers off our backs!” cried Cologne. “Archers!”

Arrows shot into the air, but the Sorcerers flew high above, and when an arrow came close, they merely soared higher, out of reach. Even Ryōga’s bandanas, which he hurled repeatedly in an endless stream.

“Aren’t you running out of those?” asked Mousse.

“No,” said Ryōga. “Why would I?”

“So, do you hide them up your sleeves or in your hair? I’m just trying to compare techniques here.”

Cologne bonked Mousse over the head with her walking stick. “Fight now; talk later! Use something in those sleeves of yours to bring those Sorcerers down or get us some cover!”

Ukyō took a canister from her belt. “I’ve got this. Mousse, do you have a match or a light I can borrow? I don’t want to burn one of my bombs.”

“Just say the word,” he said.

“Great. Here we go!” Ukyō tossed an open canister of flour, letting it tumble through the air and spread the white powder overhead. “Now!” she shouted.

Mousse raised his arms, an unusual gesture to throw a lit match, and—

FWOOSH! Jets of flame spewed from his sleeves, and the heat tingled on Ukyō’s face. The flour ignited, casting the sky aflame, and the rest of the party quickly ran out from under the falling, burning powder.

“A flamethrower?” cried Akane. “You have a flamethrower?”

Mousse blinked. “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I have a flamethrower?”

“Incoming!”

A ball of frost plowed through the smoke above, and while most of the combatants leapt high, two Amazons had their feet frozen in place and started hacking away at their bindings with swords and knives.

“What are we doing putting up a smoke screen?” Ryōga demanded. “We can’t see anything up there!”

“And they can’t see us down here,” noted Cologne. “Shampoo, take a bow.”

A fellow Amazon was hesitant to hand over his bow, but Shampoo took it firmly and a quiver. She feathered an arrow on the bowstring, and Cologne’s suspicions soon proved correct. A Sorcerer flew in low, through the smoke cover, to get a better look.

“Wound him,” Cologne instructed.

With a nod, Shampoo let the arrow fly, and it stuck in the Sorcerer’s thigh. The Sorcerer dipped briefly with a groan, but he maintained altitude long enough to turn tail and flee for the mountain.

“He will return to their main camp,” noted Cologne, “where the Sorcerers who channel this mayhem surely reside. That is where we’ll neutralize the threat. Come!”

Cologne’s party followed the wounded Sorcerer with Shampoo and Konatsu watching him via binoculars. On Cologne’s order over the radio, the other two groups engaged the Sorcerers, working their way to the base of the mountain, away from the danger of the cursed springs. As pools began to erupt in twos and threes around Jusenkyō, Cologne’s party tracked the wounded Sorcerer up the mountain. The trails were winding and vulnerable, and to gain time, the group used a combination of ropes and chains to climb.

With most of the Sorcerers’ attention on the springs themselves, the initial resistance as they climbed was light, but what started as a couple Sorcerers buzzing overhead, collapsing the trails and opening cracks in the mountain, developed into a fierce race to Sorcerer camp. Ukyō felt she could hardly go five steps before a ball of fire would zoom overhead, melting rock on the path, or a landslide would wipe out an entire section of mountain.

“Can we get a better idea of where we’re going?” Ukyō shouted over her shoulder, batting a fireball away with her spatula. “We’re sitting ducks out here, and I never liked cooking with duck anyway!”

“Lost sight of the Sorcerer somewhere past the last ridge,” Konatsu reported, scanning the sky with his binoculars. “Is there any place around here they could be channeling that spell?”

Akane looked to Ryōga.

“What is it?” asked Ukyō.

“There _is_ something close,” Akane admitted. “Some place from when we fought the Phoenix people before.”

Ryōga crouched back behind against the sheer wall of the mountain path. “There’s something close?” 

“Honestly, Ryōga-kun, can’t you remember?”

“I remember places fine; it’s just getting there that’s the problem!”

Akane pointed up the mountain to a bowl-like formation in the rock, one with a gaping hole in its side.

“The Phoenix and Dragon,” muttered Ryōga.

“What is that?” asked Ukyō.

“The sources of Jusendō, where Akane-san touched the Kinjakan and…” He grimaced.

“That must’ve been hard to watch.”

Ryōga shook his head. “Ranma took it harder.”

Without another word, the party moved on under Akane’s direction. Cover of smoke (thanks not only to Ukyō’s flour but Konatsu’s dedicated smoke bombs) shielded them from a more thorough assault for a short time, but a sweeping wind came over the mountain, pushing the smoke away and buffeting the party as it traveled.

“Isn’t there something you can do to get those Sorcerers off our backs?” Ukyō shouted over the din.

“Briefly, perhaps!” cried Cologne, her robes whipping in the wind. “if we’re close to our target, it may keep the Sorcerers occupied long enough.” She clicked the transmit button on her radio. “Bring in the dragon riders; let our people blot out the sun!”

Ukyō went cross-eyed. “You have dragons?”

“Wait and see,” said Cologne, smiling slyly.

Wait they did, clinging to the inside wall of the mountain path, ever watchful that the rocks above could come tumbling down in the wind, but Sorcerers and Amazons battled all the way down the path, back to the springs. Thanks to their thin numbers at the very front of the pack, they’d drawn less attention. Despite the adverse conditions, they were relatively safe—safe enough to wait it out until pink and white beasts loomed high overhead, their tails winding in the wind.

“You really do have dragons,” said Akane, craning her neck upward to see.

Cologne cackled. “That’s what we want you to think. You see, it was never a real problem getting _into_ the Sorcerers’ illusion. You can always do that from the sky. The problem is getting back out.”

“Why’s that? The dragons can’t fly up and out?”

“Not when they’re kites, Tendō.”

As they flew out from in front of the sun to the east, the pack of “dragons” became clear—warriors glided from the sky on painted, decorative kites. Their long, flowing tails were merely glittering ribbons with a lightweight frame of thin wood. The Amazon riders swooped in from above, diving on the airborne Sorcerers and knocking them out of the sky. Kites and bodies smashed into the mountainside, but the Amazon warriors were no worse for wear, and nearby archers eagerly took the chance to shoot their grounded foes once the dust cleared.

“Show us the way, Tendō,” said Cologne, stepping out from cover.

“My memory’s a little hazy,” Akane admitted. “Mousse, Shampoo, maybe you two can lead?”

“Of course,” said Mousse. “We want to find the faucets—the ones that have the faces of the Chinese premiers on them, right? That’s what they looked like to me, at least. Perhaps a bit more colorful, and less ugly, and—”

Shampoo stopped Mousse’s mouth with her hand. Silently, she gestured with one of her maces for the group to follow while Mousse was left to drift at the back of the group, in a blissful daze. Such was the power of Shampoo’s touch on him, but there was no time for anyone to dally, and Cologne’s prod as she rounded out the group roused him from his stupor.

The path to the was winding and difficult, for the Phoenix and Dragon Taps lay at the bottom of a large, collapsed chamber. Without delving into the mountain and its passages, there were only two points of access: from above, where the roof of the cavern had been, or from below, through a gap in the side wall of the depression, leading only to a sheer mountain wall. Cologne elected to come from above, knowing it would lose time but give them a better view of what opponents they faced. Indeed, when the party made it around to the top ring above the Taps, they felt safe enough to wait there and scout out the Sorcerers before making their move.

“There, by the base of the Dragon,” said Cologne, pointing below while gazing through binoculars. “I count eight Sorcerers, and the water responds to their spell.”

One of the pairs of binoculars made their way to Ukyō, and for the first time, she got a close look of the crater below. Two large, colorful, painted monuments stood in large pools of frothing water. One was a dragon, its head pointed straight at the sky, and Ukyō thought she saw a line across its neck, like its head had been rearranged somehow. The other was a bird, a phoenix, but that monument was broken, and the head of the bird lay separated from its neck, which was all that rose above the water level.

By the edge of the pool, eight Sorcerers meditated, kneeling in a circle, and the water near them bubbled and frothed.

“It can’t be that easy,” said Ukyō. “They’re hardly defended.”

“Don’t be deceived,” said Cologne. “The moment we set foot in that crater, we will be hard-pressed to return. The Sorcerers know that, and they will be watching. Mousse, Shampoo, Hibiki—fend off any counter-attack. The rest of you should disrupt the spell so the rest of our people can move on the mountain unencumbered. Drive the Sorcerers away from the water. It is no coincidence they have chosen this place to work their magic. There must be a close connection here to the rest of the springs, and I believe there is great magic here, too.”

“Magic?” asked Akane.

“Don’t you feel it? Even someone untrained in manipulating ki to their advantage can sense when it shifts and moves.” Cologne closed her eyes, feeling the rock beneath them. “Yes, there is a source here. Perhaps the fount of the springs is what interests them, capable as it is of such many and varied curses. Perhaps it’s something else…. Whatever it is, we will deny them its use. Let us go now, before we’re discovered.”

With a smattering of archers to cover their approach, the party descended into the crater. Whatever Cologne felt—strength of magic, something powerful—Ukyō could only shiver in the morning air. “Akane-chan, stay close,” she said, tightening the strap holding her spatula to her back. “We don’t want to lose track of each other.”

Akane nodded, saying nothing, and the girls climbed over the edge to scale the inner wall.

“Perhaps we can save ourselves some time, hm?” Cologne toed the edge and jumped off with all the pomp and ceremony of a woman in a stroller crossing a busy street. Shampoo tied her maces to her back and followed without a word.

“Wait for me, Shampoo!” Mousse, at least, rummaged through his sleeves to find a small drag parachute, which helped break his descent, one bearing a strange design.

Akane stared down as Mousse drifted below. “Does that parachute—”

“Have Shampoo’s face on it?” finished Ukyō. “With hearts? Yeah.”

“Okay. So, how can we get down there before all the fighting is over?”

At that, Ukyō frowned. She unpacked two canisters of noodles, which sprang out to an impressive length once released. She tied the long strands like rope around a nearby boulder and offered one bundle to Akane. “Ryōga, you’ve got that umbrella there. I take it you’re covered?”

He gawked. “Do you _know_ how much this thing weighs?”

“So that’s a no?”

With a sigh, Ryōga hopped down the slope, using the open umbrella to slow his descent as he skipped to the bottom. Konatsu glided down, using extensions of his ninja attire to slow his fall. Akane and Ukyō followed, repelling down the sheer wall with the bundles of noodles serving as ropes. The girls guided themselves about halfway into the crater, and—

TCH-CHEW! A beam of golden ki drilled into the crater wall. Noodles in Ukyō’s bundle sheared and snapped, and though a small handful of strands held, Ukyō fumbled and clawed at the sheer face of the mountain for a handhold.

“Here, take my hand!” Akane shuffled over, wedging her foot into a crack in the rock face. She reached with her fingers, and Ukyō grabbed Akane by the wrist.

“You ready?” asked Ukyō.

“Yeah!”

Taking a deep breath, Ukyō released her strand of noodle rope, grasping Akane’s arm with both hands. Akane grunted and strained to keep them steady, and Ukyō swung beneath her like a pendulum, but Ukyō took a page from Tarzan, taking up the bundle at a point a few feet beneath Akane and clung to it.

“You okay?” Akane called from above.

“Yeah, I’m going to climb down first!”

Akane nodded. “I’ll be right here.”

Ukyō repelled the rest of the way down gradually, cognizant that any sudden move could jeopardize Akane’s position above, but the Tendō girl held steady, and when Ukyō found the bottom, she started downward on her own. Only then, with the danger of her own descent passed, did Ukyō look about the rest of the crater. As Cologne expected, the Sorcerers came out in force to defend themselves. The Sorcerer Guard, around a dozen in number, had engaged Cologne and the rest of the party. Lightning shot through the air, striking Ryōga’s umbrella and running through him to ground, but Ryōga pushed through it, grunting through each step as he approached his foe. Where fireballs hurtled, Konatsu’s smoke bombs cut through them, dispersing the flames. The earth itself moved by the Sorcerers’ will, with rock jutting out of the ground in spiky, piercing formations, but Cologne nimbly hopped and jumped from danger at the slightest shaking under her feet.

But there was no one more difficult to defeat or more stalwart than the Captain of the Guard, who protected her men by the edge of the pool with a large, dome-shaped bubble of ki. Shampoo bashed and beat on the barrier with her maces, but each time she struck the shield, her weapons were repelled in a faint flash and high-pitched sound. At the Captain’s rear, Mousse hurled a barrage of explosive eggs, sapping the barrier’s strength with each impact. The Captain pointed him out, signaling to her men, and on cue, a pressure wave rippled through the crater, driving the egg bombs back in Mousse’s face. He hid behind his robes, protecting himself, but the damage was done: the Captain, facing only one foe, dropped her invincible shell, collected her ki into her staff, and swiped at Shampoo. Her staff traced out a line that emanated forward, and it shoved Shampoo into the crater wall.

WHAM!

Shampoo shook off the attack, wiping her sleeves clean of dust. “You only make Shampoo angry like that!” she cried.

A sparse, glowing beam pulled from Shampoo’s chest, connecting her to the Captain’s hand. The beam weakened Shampoo, forcing her to a knee, but while the Captain sucked the energy from her, the impervious shell protecting her channelers stayed down.

That was the key. The Captain could defend or attack, and perhaps she could switch between the two at will, but she couldn’t do both at once, not with that barrier.

At Ukyō’s side, Akane touched down at the base of the crater. “How does it look?” she asked.

“Not good, but that girl over there is the key, I think. If we can distract her, we can break through. I’ll go in and keep her attention. When she brings down her shell, go after the people casting that spell.”

“But what about you? I can help take her!”

“That’s not important; I’ll be fine. Don’t put yourself in too much danger. Disrupt the spell and then get out, okay?”

“Right.”

Ukyō unclipped a trio of batter bombs from her belt and hurled them the Captain’s way, but the girl was too fast—she broke her draining beam and set her sights on Ukyō instead. Ukyō closed the gap, swatting at the Captain, but the girl raised her golden shell. So far, so good. Ukyō just had to tempt the Captain to go on the offensive. She put both hands on her battle spatula and drove every ounce of strength into her blows. Reckless swings battered the barrier; they went against every instinct to stay grounded, to maintain a good defense even after attacking. She was leaving herself open, and hopefully, the Sorcerer captain would see that and be tempted to strike.

Sure enough, the barrier fell, and the Captain grabbed at Ukyō’s spatula, pulling her in. One-handed, she yanked Ukyō around and dragged her off her feet. The Captain’s staff blasted Ukyō in the back, and Ukyō’s nerves lit aflame, like a thousand pins stuck in her fingers and toes. She cried out, falling to her knees, but on the inside, she was glad, for with the barrier down, she glimpsed Akane soaring in, her battle cry echoing through the crater. Akane pounced into the middle of the channeling circle, and by the edge of the frothing, bubbling water, she performed a sweeping kick, knocking the Sorcerers off their feet.

“Nice work, Akane-chan!” cried Ukyō, but her enthusiasm was short-lived. The waters of Jusendō began to bubble over, chaotic and volatile.

The Captain towered over Ukyō, staff in hand. “You dare to disrupt a spell you can’t possibly understand,” she said, her Japanese slow but coherent. “Do you have any idea what will happen now, with the magic interrupted, having no place to go? I don’t.”

The ground shook, freeing loose boulders from above. Through the hole in the crater wall, Ukyō glimpsed the thousand springs, and what she saw there filled her with dread, for one after another, the pools erupted—not in a directed, controlled fashion as the Sorcerers had done.

Every spring went up like a geyser, showering the whole area in cursed water.

“Akane-chan!” she cried. “Get away from the water!”

The source pool spewed a tower of water over the crater. Ukyō ran to try to get Akane clear of the column, but the water came down fast. The Captain raised a shell to protect herself, but that would do nothing for Ukyō. The torrent buried her and swept her away, slamming her body into the rocks and blanketing her in darkness.

  


“Ukyō-sama! Ukyō-sama!”

She shook—from the cold air on her wet skin, from the pair of hands that jostled her. Ukyō blinked as daylight reached her eyes again. Feeling battered and sore, she sat upright, wincing.

“Good, you’re awake,” said Cologne, for once without her customary walking stick. “I’m glad you didn’t require too much resuscitation.”

“Resuscitation?” Ukyō glanced about. She sat on a raised outcropping next to the gap in the crater wall. Cursed waters gushed and flowed from the breach, trickling down the mountain. A pair of Amazon archers stood with them, trying to squeeze the water from their bowstrings. Mousse, reduced to duck form, vainly tried to dry his glasses with his fathers while Shampoo the cat shivered in the morning air. Konatsu cradled Akane’s pet P-chan—where did he come from? “Okay, wait, who resuscitated me? What kind of resuscitation are we talking about?”

“Mouth-to-mouth, of course,” said Cologne.

“From who?”

“Do you really want an answer to that question?”

At that, Konatsu went as red as a beet, and Cologne snickered.

“Akane-chan could’ve,” said Ukyō. “She’s here, right?”

Cologne shook her head. “Tendō was at the right next to the pools when they erupted, wasn’t she? I have not seen her.”

“What? Is Ryōga looking for her?”

The old woman pointed out the piglet. “The only thing Hibiki is doing right now is tracking down truffles.”

“Don’t kid around with me!”

“You didn’t know?”

Ukyō stared down the piglet, who squirmed and cowered in Konatsu’s arms. He _was_ wearing a bandana, but…no, it couldn’t be. That would mean Akane had cuddled and cradled…Ryōga?

“I’m not thinking about that right now,” said Ukyō, shooting a hard look to the piglet. “We need to look for Akane-chan.”

“How?” said Cologne. “With whom? Where? Look around. There are four of us not reduced to impotent animals. The whole of the springs have erupted, and we are without communication, without reinforcements. The Sorcerers will recover from this catastrophe faster than we can. We must retreat.”

“Retreat? No way! We can’t leave her behind!”

“There are many we’re leaving behind, but we must do what is best for our lives. One can always fight another day.”

“I don’t care about the others; we are not leaving that girl behind!”

Cologne narrowed her eyes, striking a offensive stance. “What do you think I will do for your arguing? Do you think I’ll let you walk away on your own? They’ll capture you. They’ll torture you for information on our numbers, our strength. I can’t allow that, Kuonji Ukyō. I’ll kill you myself if I must. We stay together, or we leave the dead behind. That is your choice.”

Drawing a throwing star, Konatsu stepped between Cologne and Ukyō. “No one harms Ukyō-sama. It is my sworn duty to protect her.”

“So we fight,” concluded Cologne. “So be it. I have fought for lesser purposes and against stronger foes. Do what you feel you must, and I will do the same.”

Konatsu raised his hand to throw the shuriken, but Ukyō caught him by the elbow. A fight would do them no good, so Ukyō tried something else instead. “Akane-chan?” she cried out. “Can you hear me?”

“Kuonji, quiet!” hissed Cologne, but Ukyō raised a hand to silence her. She only listened, but there was nothing. The crater had been decimated, awash with water. It was quiet, with the faint cries of men and the rushing of water the only sounds to be heard. Not a single bird sang.

And Akane wasn’t there to call back to her.

“Are you satisfied now?” asked Cologne. “Come, then. Let us escape this crater before more Sorcerers arrive.”

Meekly, Ukyō nodded, and both Cologne and Konatsu left their fighting stances. It was all she could do to keep her breathing steady and level, for in leaving Akane behind, Ukyō had failed her—and failed Ranma, too. That was the one thing he’d asked her to do, and she couldn’t get it done.

  


“Did you hear? The Chinese girl from the cat restaurant—she tried to kill Tendō Akane!”

Ukyō had heard. She’d been there. She’d seen it all. She could still hear the shattering of glass as Shampoo had shoved Akane’s hand through the transparent upper panel of one of the building doors. Shampoo was strong and powerful; she’d reduced Akane to little more than a ragdoll to play with at her pleasure, and yet Ranma did the same to her in seconds. All throughout, he hadn’t said a word. He’d seemed shocked, if anything, when he realized what he’d done, but before that…

She shuddered to think about it. Ukyō had known anger for ten long years as she’d prepared for the day she’d confront Genma and Ranma over the humiliation they’d dealt her, yet her slow-burning resentment couldn’t have held a candle to what flared up in Ranma’s eyes.

What a change it was. That morning, Ranma and Akane had come to class as the talk of the school, and there had been all this unjustified attention about the wedding and their trip to China. Ukyō had found it all irritating at the time; compared to the scene of carnage by the courtyard entrance, however…

Well, time healed all wounds. The door to the courtyard was taped off while building consultants assessed the damage and the best course of repair. As far Ranma and Akane, they retreated to the nurse’s office, skipping the next class.

And the one after that. It felt like a week, but that was only because Ukyō suffered through lectures, oblivious to the actual lessons and exercises, for Ranma was gone, and the only reason she’d enrolled in that school was to be close to him. With him staying at home—staying with Akane—this education seemed entirely meaningless. In her life, there were two things of any importance: her cooking and Ranma. The former was her passion of the mind and soul; the latter her passion of the heart. Nothing else mattered.

So when mid-afternoon break came and Ranma had yet to return, Ukyō slipped out of the classroom and headed for the nurse’s office. Ukyō wasn’t the only one with this idea. A small gaggle of students crowded around the door, but the nurse blocked the entrance sternly.

“This area is for those in need of medical attention only,” she said. “I can’t allow anyone to just come inside.”

“Saotome’s still in there, isn’t he?” asked a boy. “Didn’t look like he was hurt.”

The nurse sighed. “I’m not without compassion, but all of you are like Paparazzi trying to catch a story. I won’t have it.”

“Well, I’m not,” said Ukyō. “Can’t I come in? My fiancé’s in there.”

“Really now? He said his fiancée was the girl I had to treat.”

“It’s complicated. What do you expect with a boy who changes into a girl when you dump water on him? Things can be strange around here.”

The nurse stared, bewildered.

“Must be the only person in the school besides Kunō who doesn’t know,” said a bystander.

“Listen,” Ukyō went on, “dump a glass of cold water over his head, and if he doesn’t change into a cute, short, busty girl, I’ll walk away.”

The nurse frowned, but she hesitantly locked the door behind her. A faucet began to run, and it wasn’t long until—

Splash.

“What the hell?” came Ranma’s voice, growling yet distinctly female in tenor. The door swung open, and the speechless nurse motioned for Ukyō to come inside, much to the chagrin of the other students, who were left out.

The nurse had set up a white curtain, blocking the view from the door. Ukyō gently pulled it aside to find Ranma sitting at Akane’s bedside. While Ranma griped about the water in his hair and clothes—“Do you seriously dump water on people because someone tells you to?” he asked the nurse—Akane slept peacefully, marred only by a bundle of bandages around her hand.

“How is she?” asked Ukyō.

Ranma pursed his lips, watching Akane intently. “She’s okay. The nurse gave her something for the pain. Sleeping is better; it keeps her calm.”

“That’s good. And how are you, Ranchan?”

“Me? I’m fine. I ain’t got a scratch.”

Even if he _had_ been scratched, Ranma would shrug it off if it served him, if it made him look stronger for it. That didn’t mean much, and Ukyō wasn’t talking about physical wounds anyway. “Akane-chan’s in good hands here. Why don’t you come back to class?”

He shook his head, firm and forceful. “Shampoo could come back.”

“I don’t think so. You nearly broke her arm.”

“She’s lucky I didn’t do more than that!”

The nurse glared at Ranma, touching a finger to her lips. In frustration, Ranma grabbed the fabric of his pants on each leg, bunching up the cloth.

Ukyō cleared a place on the bed, sitting gently not to disturb Akane. “Are you really okay, Ranchan? To be honest, I’ve never seen you fight like that.”

“It was hardly a fight,” he muttered.

“You’re right. You had Shampoo at her mercy. I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it, but still—you’re antsy. You’re on edge. Maybe you’d rather be talking to Akane-chan, but she’s asleep. Who are you going to talk to but your friend Ucchan?”

His expression soured at that. “She almost died, you know.”

“You never would’ve let Shampoo do that.”

“I’m not talking about right now. I mean in China. She put herself at risk for me twice. I really thought she was dead. She was _cold_. I couldn’t hear her breathing. I—”

“It’s okay.” Ukyō took his hand and grasped it, giving him an anchor and support. “You saved her, didn’t you? It had to be you.”

He scoffed. “Well, of course it was me. Who else can get this tomboy here out of all the trouble she wanders into?” He shook his head again, staring at Akane’s face. “Geez, what did she do? What was she doing talking to Shampoo? Something must’ve set that crazy Chinese chick off.”

Ukyō looked to the head of the bed, where Akane slept peacefully. Oh, what she wouldn’t have given to be Akane right then. The rumors were true; something _had_ happened between Akane and Ranma, something to solidify a bond between them that was difficult to shake. Her sacrifice—whatever it was—had earned her Ranma’s devotion. Why else would he stay with her even while she slept?

Still, Ranma’s concerns were at least somewhat justified. Ukyō had never thought Shampoo would give up on Ranma without a fight, but this attack of hers was bold. In full view of most of the school, she didn’t care who saw her.

“I think she must’ve just snapped,” said Ukyō. “I don’t know why, but she said Akane shouldn’t have come back.”

Ranma twitched, and he met Ukyō’s gaze. “You heard all that?”

Ukyō nodded.

“How long were you there, Ucchan?”

“Not long?” Ukyō tried to pull her hand away, but the pressure on her fingers increased. “Maybe a minute or two before you got there; that’s really it.”

“A minute would’ve been enough to stop Shampoo from shoving Akane’s hand through that glass. Didn’t you try to stop her?”

“I couldn’t! She had Akane-chan in her clutches; if I moved any closer, Shampoo would’ve killed her right then and there!”

Ranma stared at her, and instinctively, Ukyō looked away. Shampoo had had Akane cornered. She’d threatened Ukyō not to approach. What else could she have done? Did she have the aim to hit Shampoo’s hand with a throwing spatula and knock the mace out of her hand? Could she have wrapped up Shampoo’s arm in noodles and given Akane the time to escape?

No, Shampoo was too quick, too fast, and if Ukyō had provoked her, Akane might’ve been ended before Ranma could even arrive.

And if Shampoo had succeeded, Akane would’ve been gone, Shampoo would’ve faced Ranma’s wrath, and of the three of them, only Ukyō would’ve been left.

But that was insane! She didn’t—she hadn’t _deliberately_ left Akane to Shampoo’s mercy. She just couldn’t think what else to do!

“When you came to the wedding yesterday, you came with bombs,” observed Ranma. “Why?”

“Didn’t you two say just this morning it wasn’t your idea? I knew it couldn’t have been what you wanted. And don’t forget—I have an interest in you, too.”

Ranma looked away. “And you do what you have to do to protect what you care about. That’s fair.”

“Glad you see it my way.”

“That you and Shampoo hit me with those bombs was just a mistake.”

“Exactly!”

“You really meant to hit Akane instead.”

“Well, of course. I—” Ukyō caught herself. “No! That’s not—that’s not what I meant! They were just these little things, honest! Harmless, right? They hardly had you stopped for more than a second. She wouldn’t have been seriously hurt! I mean, they weren’t meant for her. They were just supposed to be a disruption!”

“Give me a good reason to believe that,” he snapped. “Give me a reason to think you don’t want her out of your way.”

Ukyō trembled. What was he saying? That she was no better than Shampoo? That she’d done something so heinous, so appalling, all out of selfish desire and need? It wasn’t true, not an ounce of it, but could she prove that to him? Could she prove that to herself? When she cooked those special okonomiyaki in her kitchen, what was it that kept her going—the thought that Ranma would be saved from a wedding he didn’t want or the jealousy and hurt from imagining Akane at his side as he took vows with her?

Try as she might to expose it, the specter of selfishness haunted her, and it refused to be banished or dispelled. And for that, she wept. Ranma’s accusation had cut to her soul. When they’d reunited after ten years, he’d found a good and happy girl buried beneath ten years of hatred and anger, but without his love, that vindictiveness and greed could never be defeated.

Seeing Ukyō’s distress, Ranma’s next words were calm yet steady and firm. “You can’t do that again, Ucchan,” he said. “If you ever hurt her, if you ever stand by while she’s in danger, then you’ve made your choice. Do either, and you won’t be my friend anymore—never mind anything about fiancés. Promise me you won’t do that.”

Biting her lip, Ukyō nodded. “I promise, Ranchan,” she whispered.

“Thanks,” he said, and that was all. He set his gaze back on Akane, and when the break between classes came to an end, Ukyō silently excused herself—not just from the nurse’s office but from school, too. Ranma had all but made his choice, and it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her, yet she couldn’t be angry with Akane, either. She’d promised. She’d promised Ranma. If she ever wanted a chance with him, if she treasured his friendship at all, she could only shut those feelings out of her mind, lest the darkness in her heart take over.

  


Unlike some people, Ukyō upheld her promises. If Akane was going to China to help save Ranma, Ukyō would go too. She had to. Even if Ranma had really turned his eye toward someone else, Ukyō couldn’t bring herself to disappoint him. That’s what her father couldn’t have hoped to understand. Her pursuit of Ranma had gone far beyond just what she wanted or what she was owed. She had an obligation of her own to fulfill.

And she’d failed in it. Akane was missing at best, dead at worst. In the rush to get off the mountain, Ukyō had precious little time to dwell on this matter, and for that, she felt strangely thankful. If the party had sat in one place doing nothing, she might’ve jumped out of her skin.

But the only jumping to be done was atop fragile, wobbly bamboo poles. At the base of the mountain, the springs had flooded, rendering any crossing on the ground impossible. Only the bamboo in each spring lay above the sludge. Cologne had no trouble leapfrogging across, nor did Konatsu as he carried Shampoo and Ryōga, but Ukyō found the experience uncertain and terrifying. One wrong step, and who knows what curse she would bring upon herself. She could turn into a dog or a rat or worse—much worse. Below her, animals writhed in the springs’ waters, and their forms were strange and varied. Fish flopped in the shallows with the ears and tails of cats. Birds swooped in, but where their beaks should’ve been, they had snakes’ mouths instead.

Overall, it was definitely better not to look down. Ukyō was having a hard enough time hopping from one bamboo pole to the next. They were narrower than her foot and shook with each landing. Little wonder people fell into the springs all the time—even Ranma and his father. Given the consequences if she fell, Ukyō resisted any sense of urgency, even knowing it might slow down the group. If she ended up cursed into a helpless monstrosity, what good would she do them?

That caution was just and sound, but the time lost didn’t help matters. When the group finally found solid ground to set foot on, they started trying to find their bearings. The foothold camp was the only way back through the Maze, and if there were reinforcements to be found, they’d be there, but on the eastern end of the cursed spring ground, a plume of smoke rose over the trees, casting a pall on the midday sky.

“A campfire?” asked Konatsu.

Cologne narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think so. Come, quickly!”

With Mousse flying overhead, the remaining members of the party rushed over soggy ground to the foothold camp. Flames took hold in the trees, burning brightly. Vainly, the Amazons tried to fill buckets from the springs, hoping to douse the flames, but a pack of pesky Sorcerers hovered over the camp, out of the arrows’ reach.

“You there!” shouted Cologne, taking aside a foothold defender. “What’s the situation here? We must bring those Sorcerers down. Where are the fireworks?”

“We’ve used everything we brought with us inside, Speaker!”

Cologne cursed under her breath. “Then we have no choice. Give the instruction to fall back to outside the illusion. We can’t afford to be trapped here, understand?”

Fighting through the smoke, the party found the guide ropes back to the outside. Some were already on fire, reduced to tatters by the onslaught. Though the smoke stung her eyes, Ukyō held an arm over her forehead to block what she could, and she and Konatsu shuffled their way into the maze, bringing a trio of animals—Mousse landed on Ukyō’s shoulder, along with Konatsu’s pair—to safety, too. She coughed and wheezed, but as long as she felt the rope between her hands, she knew that stinging sensation in her throat and lungs would soon pass.

“Kuonji, down!” Cologne called from the front.

Get down for what? In all the smoke she could hardly see a thing, but she did _feel_ something—a warmth on her face and arms, coming from in front of her, like standing before a lava lamp or a radiator or…

Or a giant wall of fire?

Ukyō tossed two handfuls of explosive tempura flakes at the wall, and the blasts opened a breach at the base of the wall. Still, the bulk of the wall passed around them, and scattered embers caught Ukyō’s bow, Konatsu’s sleeves, and Ryōga’s spotted bandana.

“SQUEE!” The little piglet took off running, frantic and panicked.

“Get back here, you dumb pig! You want to get lost?” In vain, Ukyō tried to catch him with noodle rope, improvising a lasso, but the small target was too quick and nimble to be caught. “Konatsu, keep a hold on these noodles. I’ll be damned if we lose Akane-chan _and_ Ryōga today!”

“And I’d never forgive myself if I let you leave the guide rope,” said Konatsu. “Please, Ukyō-sama, you’ve done all you can. If either of us lost our grip, we can’t be sure we’d find each other again.”

Konatsu could be so sure about her. He seemed to see her with sparkles and glitter, and all that for what? Because she helped free him? Sure, it was a good thing to do, but how she helped him shouldn’t cloud his judgment. That nagging feeling that she still hadn’t done enough gnawed at her, but she let out a resigned sigh. “He’s got something coming to him if Akane-chan doesn’t know who he is, but being lost in a place that’s impossible to navigate even for ordinary people—that’s cruel.”

“We’ll bring it down and find him,” said Konatsu. “And Akane-sama, too.”

“We’d better.”

With arrows shooting into the treetops around them, Ukyō and Konatsu struggled through the smoke and emerged on the outside of the Maze, but the situation there was hardly any better. From above, Sorcerers rained fire on the Amazon camp. It spread like a disease through the woods. It infected the ballistae, eating away at the weapons’ springs. The tremendous energy stored within them released, hurling pieces of wood and metal over the camp.

“Break out the fireworks!” cried Cologne. “Light up the sky, brothers and sisters!”

From burning tents, the Amazons rescued bundles of fireworks. It took little to find an open flame to light the fuses, and the brilliant shower of rocket trails formed a rainbow in the morning sky. Cologne herself took a pack of six fireworks, and with a pair of straps, she wore them like a warrior wears an armored suit.

“You can’t be serious,” said Ukyō.

“On the contrary, Kuonji, you have yet to see me be serious. This is an ancient technique, dating back to the tenth century. That said, fireworks were notoriously less reliable back then. There are no verified accounts of this technique succeeding until 1891.”

“And this makes it a good idea?”

“Have some faith in an old woman, won’t you? I’m not as frail and fragile as I look.”

The fireworks lit, and a burst of thrust kicked up dirt and dust. Cologne rocketed skyward, spiraling to the stars. How she steered Ukyō couldn’t guess, but Cologne piloted her fireworks pack expertly, making a beeline for an airborne Sorcerer, and a colossal punch swatted the foe from the sky. With a colorful trail in her wake, Cologne guided her fireworks to two more Sorcerers, bringing them down same as the first, and when there were no more enemies in sight, she turned back on the sputtering fireworks. She cut herself loose, and as the fireworks exploded overhead in a bizarre cacophony of light and sound, she stuck a landing on the scorched earth, no worse for wear.

“Impressive,” said Konatsu. “What do you call it?”

Cologne dusted herself off, going back to her usual slow and deliberate gait. “Uncomfortably warm,” she said, “but effective.”

She motioned to more of her men for additional fireworks, but the gesture was unneeded. With three of their number wounded, the Sorcerers in the sky hesitated to press the attack. The onslaught of fire leveled off for a time, but still, the bulk of the base camp had been eaten away by flames.

“They knew when we were coming,” Cologne observed. “They could sense us as soon as we set foot in their maze. Every second, we’re losing more and more of our arms, our supplies, our people, and if the Sorcerers come back in force, we will lose this place. The only solution is to go where they cannot find us.”

Cologne called over an aide to spread the word—the Amazons were going to retreat, leaving their dead and missing behind, with no hope of rescue, no salvation, or escape.

  


Unhindered by Sorcerer pests, the Amazons retreated to the cliffs above and around Jusenkyō, where the dragon riders had made their perch to breach the spring ground from the sky. Their camp was small and ill-equipped, however, with little food and water to support the larger force—what was left of it. Dozens of Amazons had been cursed in the eruption of the springs, taking on bizarre and unsightly forms. Monkeys with bird claws for hands gestured and howled wildly, and lizards with giant, insect-like compound eyes slithered about the cliffside camp, buzzing like gnats. And for all these malformed and helpless creatures, there was hardly enough hot water to go around. What the Amazons did heat and boil, they tried to save after turning their brethren back to human form, collecting the spent water in pans.

And then there were the wounded—the ones with burns that turned their skin unnatural colors, the ones whose eyes went red with irritation from smoke.

It all made Ukyō ill. Really, she was a chef and a martial artist, proud of her skills in both, but a warrior on a strange battlefield she was not, and the sights she saw there gave her chills.

“Please, hold still, Ukyō-sama,” said Konatsu, applying ointment to a burn on her shoulder. “I’m trying to be gentle.”

“I’m hardly hurt. There are Amazons out there with burns over half their bodies.”

“It’s my duty to tend to you.”

“Good that some people can hold up their ends in this world,” she muttered. “Unlike me.”

Konatsu hesitated, and he peered around her to catch her eye. “What do you mean by that?”

Ukyō pressed her lips together, stern. “I told her to go attack those people channeling that spell. I said I’d be the distraction. I thought that would make it easier for her, that it would put her in less danger, but it didn’t. When she was up late last night, she had doubts about going, and I could’ve told her to stay behind. She’d have been safe that way, but I encouraged her instead. I stood by while Shampoo was attacking her. I brought bombs to her wedding, and I didn’t care what happened to her. All along, I only cared about what _I_ wanted, and that was Ranchan.”

Konatsu put down the bowl of balm and circled around Ukyō, looking her in the eye. “That’s not true. You protected her when the Sorcerers came to the camp yesterday. You’ve been right by her side this whole trip. You offered me a home and freedom when you didn’t even know me. You may doubt yourself, Ukyō-sama, but I don’t doubt you.”

It was good someone had faith in her. Even her father had doubted her, and Ranma had taken her to task, but this was no time for doubt or hesitation. Ranma was still in Sorcerer hands, and at best, Akane was missing somewhere on the mountain. And Ryōga, too, had been lost in the Maze.

“Ukyō-sama, look!”

Konatsu pointed down the path, and to their mutual surprise, they saw a tiny black piglet trudging up the cliffs. Weary, scratched, and bruised, Ryōga looked about ready to collapse, but Konatsu dashed ahead to rescue him.

“How on earth did you make it out?” asked Ukyō, studying the wounded pig. “Did you get blasted clear of the illusion or something?”

Konatsu placed Ryōga atop a metal pan and poured, and hot water restored Ryōga to his human form. Konatsu hurriedly offered Ryōga a blanket to protect the boy from shame. “There were explosions and flames all over the place,” he explained. “I really couldn’t tell you. It’s like when I end up in another city; I don’t even notice that I got there.”

“Chalk it up to Ryōga-sama’s sense of direction, yeah?” said Konatsu.

Perhaps. At the least, it was a relief one of their number was safe after all. After that, Ukyō had only one question. “Does Akane-chan know?”

Ryōga shook his head, glancing away in shame.

“Then this—” SLAP! “That’s for her dignity, and I expect you’ll apologize to her when we get her back, right?”

“You think we can find her?” asked Ryōga. “You think we can get back in there and save her? I’d give anything—do anything—to see that she’s safe.”

Ukyō sighed, letting the last spurt of adrenaline ebb off. “So would I.”

With Ryōga recovered after all, the party from Nerima gathered by a ledge overlooking the springs, with Shampoo, Mousse, and Ryōga damp and draped in ill-fitting robes.

“We were disadvantaged from the start,” Cologne concluded. “If the Sorcerers can detect us in their Maze as soon as we set foot in it, they will always know that we’re coming. I hoped we could surprise them with overwhelming force, but this magic they’ve unleashed on the spring ground—they are either ingenious for it or reckless. Perhaps both.”

The Nerima party gathered by a ledge overlooking the springs, with Shampoo, Mousse, and Ryōga, who was still damp and draped in ill-fitting robes.

“Our footholds are not safe,” observed Cologne. “The best we can do is send some of our people inside with no established means of escape and give them a way out when they are ready. A large team will be discovered. I suggest something smaller—an elite, guerrilla force who will scout out the Sorcerers, discover the channelers’ location, and kill them. I assume you will go, Shampoo?”

“Shampoo prove her worth to the Tribe, absolutely,” she said.

“And you, Mousse?”

He took a pair of hands into his own. “Shampoo, I would follow you anywhere. I am always honored to stand by your side.”

“All well and good,” said Cologne, “but you might want to let go of Hibiki, yes?”

Ryōga yanked his arms away, leaving Mousse aghast. “For Akane-san’s sake, I would go too, if you’ll have me. She can be like a prickly flower, dangerous to the touch, but all living things need care.”

Cologne rolled her eyes. “Sentimental and poetic. How touching.” She looked to Ukyō. “I believe that leaves only you and your servant boy, Kuonji. You are not a warrior of my people; you aren’t obligated to follow my lead, and I think it is clear the dangers the Sorcerers face to the unprepared are great indeed. Nevertheless, I think we all know your answer.”

Cologne was right about that. Before, just knowing Ranma was in danger would’ve been enough to convince her, for if Ranma weren’t safe, Ukyō’s hopes for a future with him would be dashed. Now, he may already have made his choice—a choice that didn’t include her.

So why go to China at all? Because Ranma was still a friend, or she hoped to be a friend to him. He’d asked something of her, and as much as it tugged at her heart to do it, she would fulfill that promise no matter what. She had a responsibility toward Akane, and following through with it would prove to Ranma she could be relied on.

More than that, it would prove to herself that the girl who brought bombs to the wedding, who stood by while Akane was being attacked and threatened with death, was but a small part of her. She could control that part. She could hold it in check—or at least, she wanted to.

“We can go in there and bring down the magic zone those Sorcerers have put up,” she said. “What then?”

“If we can bring it down, then the whole of our war party will descend on Jusenkyō, rescue Ranma and our people, and take what Sorcerers we can to get answers, to find out why they’ve emerged.”

“And find Akane-chan,” said Ukyō. “She’s still alive.”

“What you do with your lives once the illusion is brought down is your business,” said Cologne. “But if risk capture by the Sorcerers, I will kill you myself than let the secrets of my people reach them. Am I understood?”

It was a fair condition, for Ukyō would accept nothing less than success.

  


The promises a girl makes to others have only as much worth as she assigns to them. She can choose to uphold them or break them at will, and the cost to doing either is something she must continually weigh. Sometimes, the promises she makes may be in conflict with what she wants for herself, but to break them would impugn her honor—indeed, the very goodness of her soul.

As daylight waned on the Tibetan Plateau, Cologne assembled the new party, composed of denizens from Nerima ward, elite Amazon archers, and two of the finest warriors in Shampoo and Mousse. Cologne led the party herself, and she alone held the spear that would guide them by rope into the spring ground. That rope she would cut herself, for the party would bring down the Sorcerer illusion or never leave at all.

And Ukyō stood with them. To keep her promise to Ranma, she would put her life at risk and search for Akane until every inch of Jusenkyō had been scoured. To keep her promise to her father, she would exercise restraint and caution, even on this dangerous mission, so that she’d come back home alive when it was all over. She had nothing to remember her promise to Ranma by, but with her hairbow burned and in tatters, Ukyō used the spatula with golden trim to keep her hair in place.

“Well then,” said Cologne, standing before the edge of the Maze, spear in hand. “Are we ready?”

The members of the guerrilla party nodded, and with that Cologne turned her shoulder to the illusion, hurling the spear high and far. The trailing rope fell to the earth below, and Cologne took up the line in her hand.

“Let us go then,” said Cologne, “where no one to help us may reach.”


End file.
